


split me in half if it makes you feel better

by justlookthroughme



Series: the serum was never why you were special [3]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Breathplay, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Bucky Barnes Has Panic Attacks, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Turns 100, Choking, Domestic Avengers, Electrocution, Evil Alexander Pierce, F/M, Gone Terribly, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hypothermia, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Mental Institutions, Multi, Natasha Questions God and Destiny, Overdosing, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sick Bucky Barnes, Sloooooooooowly, Steve Rogers Has Issues, Suicide Attempt, Threesome - F/M/M, Who Should Have Died, terribly wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 16:55:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24410155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justlookthroughme/pseuds/justlookthroughme
Summary: “That never happened with us and Pierce. Don't talk like this.”Bucky seemed to have ran out of energy to speak.“Wouldn’t I know if it did?" Natasha pressed on, desperation leaching into her voice.“Maybe I wasn’t the only one made to forget things.”**Cans of worms open from the good old forgotten days.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Alexander Pierce, James "Bucky" Barnes/Alexander Pierce/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov
Series: the serum was never why you were special [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1709590
Comments: 16
Kudos: 28





	1. I’m too old for this body

**Author's Note:**

> After completing the previous two parts of this story, i didn't think I was going to write a third one. And I most definitely didn't plan on it being 20+k mini-novel. 
> 
> So here, my labor of love and the final conclusion. Hope you enjoy. Take care of yourselves. xx
> 
> Also, this is a re-upload (changed a few minor details).

It was a cold and lazy evening on Steve’s floor of the Avengers Tower, with balloons bobbing and party decorations scattered everywhere. The banner was still hanging up on the wall.

Sam, Steve, Natasha and Bucky huddled on the couch, sharing a gigantic blanket. They looked like children gathering for an after-school special. Steve still had his party hat on, much to Bucky’s chagrin. They were watching The Little Mermaid, Steve’s personal favorite.

Natasha couldn’t focus – she had seen it a million times before, anyway. Her mind raced a mile a minute, the words on the tip of her tongue, waiting to be alone with Steve.

It had all started very early that morning – actually, it had been budding since she before she was even born – when Natasha crept downstairs to Steve’s floor, making sure Bucky was still asleep. She had left him a note saying she decided to join Steve and Sam on their morning run, and that she would be back soon. Bucky had always had trouble sleeping and usually woke up close to noon, sluggish and exhausted, dark circles heavy under his eyes. His lack of sleep quality usually made him the last to rise among the rest of the Avengers –a fact that Natasha had counted on today.

When the food was done, the decorations set up, the cake at the bakery waiting for Wanda to retrieve, the piñata hung from the ceiling and the balloons inflated by Steve’s super-soldier lungs, Natasha turned around and found Bucky standing by the door.

“I…couldn’t go back to sleep and didn’t know where you were,” he said quietly, hair a tousled mess with little brown tendrils escaping his bun. He was still in his oversized sweater with sleeves so long that only the tips of his fingers peeked out, almost swallowing his pair of white boxers with red hearts printed all over them. His eyes were red-rimmed and bleary. Dear God, Natasha just wanted to hug him.

“I left you a note on the nightstand,” she countered. A party streamer dangled from her hand in suspended motion. Fuck it, anyway. She tossed it onto Steve’s couch. The surprised was ruined.

“Oh.” Bucky blinked slowly, like he was still in a sleep-addled haze. “I didn’t check.” He looked around blankly but all he said was, “Please. No piñatas.”

In hindsight, Natasha should have known but she didn’t. Nor did she ask questions. She should have. “Okay. No piñatas.” Bucky was still standing there, eyes fixated on the digit-shaped balloons, arranged side by side to form the number ‘100’. “Honey, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he replied so quietly Natasha barely heard it. “It’s lovely. Thank you.” Before she could say anything else, he turned towards her with a look of despair that matched his voice. “What time should I be ready?”

“In…an hour, or so.”

Bucky nodded, like Natasha had told him to go back to war in 1942. “I’ll go get dressed.”

Natasha watched his slouched, retreating back disappear into Steve’s elevator.

By the time Bucky returned, the piñata had been taken down, the cake had been placed on the table with 100 candles crammed into it, and the guests were having fun. Even Carol had come bearing gifts, having just landed from a planet whose name Natasha’s mind was too congested to bother taking note of. Half the attendants were daring one another to lift the Mjolnir. Steve had gracefully removed himself from the challenge, and joined Peter Quill on the karaoke machine with The Wakandans cheering them on.

It was a pretty successful surprise birthday party, even if Bucky hadn’t been so surprised. But he looked like he had fun, or at least felt well enough to be able to pretend so convincingly.

Now trapped in the couch between her and Steve, he looked tired and a little pensive, staring right through the giant flat-screen TV, courtesy of Stark Tech.

“You know, this is a very strong depiction of a woman having to change herself to fit society’s ideals,” Steve was saying around a mouthful of popcorn. He looked silly, with bits of blue icing still stuck in his blond hair from the food fight with Clint.

“It’s not society she cares about. It’s that prince. She wants that dick,” Sam countered. He stole the bowl of popcorn off of Steve’s lap.

Steve looked at Sam in horror. “You take that back! She’s an independent character. She wants to _stand_ on her own two _feet_ , no matter _what_ it costs. I think it’s brave – a little disillusioned, I’ll admit, but _brave_.”

Natasha didn’t miss how Bucky was staring at Steve like he hung the moon. Maybe he did. Was there anything Steve couldn’t do?

She wondered if she had been imagining this…this _thing_ , since she found out that Bucky and Steve once slept together, but after having obsessively going through the past few years in her mind since they had found Bucky, she realized that it had always been there between them – whatever it was. Subtle, but glaringly obvious once she knew what to look for and where.

“Hey, hey, if you’re going to write an essay, I’m not stopping you,” Sam said, holding his palms up in mock surrender. The popcorn bowl left unguarded, Steve snatched it back.

Tugging on the blanket passionately, he went on stoutly, “It’s true – she lived her whole life wanting more, and it’s not ungratefulness. It’s…it’s this desire to _be_ more. To _achieve_ more. That’s, you now, _honorable_. She would stop at nothing, even if her biological make up is a deterrence.” He popped a popcorn into his mouth, concluding his speech.

Bucky was still staring at Steve, with what Natasha knew was the trembling weight of unspoken admiration. She had seen it enough times. She just never noticed it before. His lips were slightly pursed, like he was deep in thought.

But it was Sam who said it. “So Erskine is Ursula?”

That seemed to shift something in the atmosphere. Even underneath the warm blankets, Natasha felt cold. Steve didn’t reply, but Bucky did.

“She looks more like a HYDRA emblem to me,” he mumbled. He lifted up the blanket and abruptly stood up. “I’m going to bed.” The absence of his body heat made Natasha feel colder still.

“Dude. It’s 6.30pm.” Sam leaned over Steve and patted Bucky’s still warm seat. “Sit.”

“Nah, I need to regroup.” He feigned a smile and kissed the top of Natasha’s head. “Go downstairs and see my goats. I appreciate the party. I love you. Thank you. Thank you all of you,” he added to Steve and Sam.

When Bucky disappeared into the elevator, Natasha didn’t miss how Steve’s gaze lingered a moment too long either. It pained her to have been a spy for the better part of her life and missed all this. How she gained the mantle of Black Widow, she would never know.

She refused to say anything. She tucked herself into the space Bucky previously occupied next to Steve and leaned into him. Steve picked up his banter with Sam and it’s almost easy to pretend everything was normal.

**

Natasha found Bucky in bed, cocooned in blankets and staring blankly at nothing.

“Thought you went to see your goats?” she asked casually, walking over to the bed. “Scoot.” Bucky unwrapped himself and made a little opening in the blankets for Natasha to slither in. She made herself comfortable; the top of her head pressed into the hollow of his throat.

“I did, a while ago. T’Challa’s very thoughtful.”

“He is.” Natasha felt Bucky intertwine his legs with hers. His feet were cold. Sometimes Natasha felt like his body had gotten so accustomed to being in cryostasis that it forgot how to live way it did before. Just like Bucky.

“How did you like the party?”

“It was awesome, Nat. I love you. So much,” he breathed, kissing her cheek.

“Like your gifts?”

“Mm-hmm.” Bucky nodded his head, his chin rubbing affectionately on the top of Natasha’s head. She didn’t have to look to know that strands of her red hair were caught in his light stubble.

Her heart pounded in her chest. “I haven’t given you mine.”

“The party itself wasn’t a gift?” he drawled.

“No, silly.”

“You don’t have to,” he mumbled fondly into her hair, sounding sleepy. He was always sleepy. Dead on his feet. “You’re the best gift of all.”

“But I _want_ to,” she insisted.

“Okay, fine,” Bucky chuckled. “What do you have for me?”

Natasha felt her stomach tighten with nerves, but she didn’t let it show. She rolled over on top of him so she could look him in the eye. Up close, she finally noticed he had been crying. “Wait, what’s wrong?” she asked calmly. She had seen this way too many times to be alarmed.

Bucky stifled a sigh and rolled out from underneath her, facing the other side. He scrunched up a pillow and hugged it tight between his chest and lower face. “I don’t want to think about it,” he said into the feather-stuffed pillow, voice muffled. “Actually, I think about it all the time. I don’t wanna _talk_ about it. Not right now,” he muttered, still turned away from her.

“Okay.” Natasha swept the messy brown strands of hair off his face – his hair was getting long, and she wondered why he never cut it off as a way to, maybe, _reclaim_ his identity or something, but although James and her shared everything, some subjects were still hard to breach.

She snaked an arm around his chest, feeling his heart beating, soft and slow, and just basked in the moment – he was healthy and he was _alive_. That was all that mattered right now. One day at a time. She knew they could do this, even if they had to crawl through it to the other side.

They had seen empires rise and fall together, entire galaxies collapse and rebuilt. There was simply no place in this life for her without him. There never was.

Time ticked by as Natasha watched the sun go down and the reflection of New York’s city lights flicker on the window glass of the Tower. Bucky had been silent for so long Natasha thought he had fallen asleep.

“I’m a century years old,” he sighed suddenly into the dimly lit darkness.

“Really?” she said, voice muffled against his back. She readjusted her position, making herself comfortable. “You don’t look a day over ninety-nine, you sexy old man.”

“I will. The serum’s gone.”

“Oh, James…” Natasha stretched out her neck and kissed his jaw.

“It’s not just that.” He rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. “I’m _old_.”

Natasha traced the outline of his lips. He was the most beautiful man she ever laid eyes on. By the time he got old and grey and wrinkled, Natasha doubted that she would have loved him any less, if not even more – if that was possible. It never mattered what he looked like – he could have his entire face dented in and Natasha would still lay her life down for him. “You’re probably having a half-life crisis.”

“I’m a _hundred_ years old and I lived _seventy_ percent of those as a captive.” He closed his eyes and shuddered, as if he could shrug off his past. “Forgive me for having birthday blues.”

Natasha fell silent. How could she have been so ignorant? “That’s why you were so quiet today.”

Bucky laid his flesh arm over his eyes, like he couldn’t stand the sight of the memories flashing through his mind. “They used to hang me from my wrists and beat me up with stun batons – the electricity on, of course. They weren’t blindfolded, though. I was.”

Natasha felt her chest tighten. _Just like a fucking piñata_. She imagined what it would feel like to have her fingers wrapped around Alexander Pierce’s throat and squeeze the life slowly out of him as she twisted his intestines around the fingers of her other hand. Pierce would never beg for mercy, proud as he was – he didn’t the day Natasha watched him die by Fury’s hand, but it would be satisfying to make him. To break him into something he wasn’t, the way he did Bucky.

When she was done with him, she would feed his body parts to the rest of the remaining HYDRA associates.

“I’m tired,” Bucky whispered.

If Bucky wanted to drop the subject, then Natasha was going to let it drop.

She laid back down, careful not to touch him – Bucky tended to cower from physical proximity when he needed his space, something his therapist said was related to his PTSD. His arm was still covering half his face, and the half Natasha could see was very subtly lined with lingering pain. He was only pretending to sleep, and she knew, tonight in particular, sleep was going to be hard to come by for the both of them.


	2. I’m too dead to be alive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha's somewhat self-sacrificial plan to help Bucky leads him to decide he has had enough with this life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very graphic suicidal attempt description. Navigate responsibly.

Natasha saw it again, during breakfast.

“Want some toast, Buck?” Steve asked, while Bucky poured milk into his coffee. It had only happened once, but everyone made sure to never mention milk in front of him again.

“Sure,” Bucky answered, somewhat distractedly, making sure his coffee was at his exact favorite temperature. He was very particular about things like that, as a way of having control. And when the toast popped up from the toaster, it was exactly the shade of dark brown Bucky liked; even Natasha could never get it right for him.

She saw how Steve slid the plate of toast over to Bucky across the counter, how Bucky beamed back appreciatively at him in a way that made Natasha’s head momentarily ache, like all the blood was rushing to her brain, and how Steve watched Bucky affectionately as he buttered them.

Was this what breakfast looked like for them every morning back then?

She kept seeing all kinds of little tell-tale signs – everywhere – she might as well had been _blind_. All those drawings Steve made of Bucky, spanning over their entire _childhood_ into adulthood. The reason why Bucky even fell from the train in the first place, although Natasha hated to think of it that way; it wasn’t Steve’s fault that Bucky agreed to go back to fight HYDRA with him. How Steve remembered the names of every one of Bucky’s exes when Bucky himself didn’t – and it had been that way since before HYDRA fried his brain. And the way Bucky sometimes needed Steve almost as much as he needed her.

“Fury called,” Tony announced, grabbing a spoon and a bowl. “He’s asking if you,” he pointed the spoon at Bucky, “wanted to re-join the Avengers?” Everyone went silent and Tony quickly tacked on, “You don’t have to give an answer today. Or tomorrow.”

Bucky bit into the last of his toast. “Why does he care? I have nothing to offer the team.”

“Bucky,” Steve sighed, always quick to defend him against himself.

“What?” Bucky said, around a mouthful. “I’m getting slower, I’m getting weaker, I’m getting _older_ in case Fury forgot he dropped by the party yesterday, and,” he squinted, inspecting his half-eaten toast, “I think I’m starting to need glasses. What is this, a bug in the butter? Fucking hell.”

“You don’t have to join us,” Natasha said, “but doesn’t mean you’re not worthy of it. You have nothing to prove, either way.”

“Yeah. Well.” Bucky dropped his toast back onto the plate and downed the rest of his coffee. “I’m going to clear out and feed the goats.”

Tony chuckled, eating cereal. “Do you have names for each of them?”

Natasha only now noticed, after five years of having breakfasts together on the common floor, that Tony poured _milk_ first, before cereal. God. She really had been blind, or as Madame B would say, _sloppy_. Or maybe she was just going crazy.

“Sure,” Bucky replied, already walking towards the elevator as if the discussion would chase him down and sink its teeth into him if he didn’t move fast enough. “After each of the dwarves and two Greek Gods.” The elevators slid shut before Tony could respond.

Natasha glanced at Steve, who was doing the dishes. He still hadn’t gotten the hang of dishwashers. She waited anxiously for Tony to leave.

“Genius, that one,” Tony remarked. It took Natasha a moment to realize he was talking about Bucky. “You sure know how to pick’em.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?” Natasha bit back.

She never got an answer.

**

Natasha did everything in her casual power – she didn’t want to go to the extent of her Red Room training – to keep Steve in the kitchen. She sat him down and engaged him in a conversation with Tony about gadgets – Steve looking bored and confused the whole time – and when it looked like he was going to leave before Tony did, she even offered to make eggs and bacon in case anyone was still hungry. Steve stayed because he was polite and Natasha knew how to play him. Tony stayed because, well, _bacon_.

Eventually, though, Tony did leave. Steve and Natasha were finally alone.

“Boy, I didn’t think I was actually hungry,” Steve said, eating the meal appreciatively. It was his third plate.

Natasha feigned nonchalance. “Super-metabolism and all that.”

Steve nodded and ate another forkful.

Steeling herself, Natasha opened her mouth to speak. “I, uh, I’ve been thinking.”

Steve paused his chewing and looked up from his plate. “What?”

“What would you say, if… I mean, you _have_ had sex, right?”

Steve blinked once. Twice. “You know I have.”

“With, you know, other than Bucky.”

Steve pushed the plate aside. “A girl in school. Apparently she did it on a dare. Did wonders for my self-esteem. Where are you going with this?”

“What are your thoughts on, you know, having… _fondue_ with three people?” Seeing the increasingly confused look on Steve’s face, she added, “At once?”

Steve tilted his face away, side-eyeing her. “Natasha,” he said suspiciously in an almost sing-song voice, “are you feeling alright?”

“Just tell me.”

Steve started blubbering. “I… I mean to each their own, and all that. Whatever floats your boat. If – if there are three in yours, and…and everyone is in agreement, with the uh, arrangement, I guess, why – why not?”

Natasha arched an elegant eyebrow. “Eloquently said.”

Steve looked at her, tensed. “Are you and Bucky thinking of…”

Natasha shrugged her shoulders, as though it was something she was just toying around with and not something that had been keeping her up for a few nights. “Maybe.”

“Wow,” Steve breathed, leaning back into the chair. “ _Bucky_.”

Natasha felt herself bristling for some reason. “What?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Steve said, leaning back across the table towards her. “I guess he’s…exploring. Wouldn’t surprise me though, if this was something he did back in the 40s.” Steve chuckled. “Good old Buck.”

Natasha reached out and stole a bite of Steve’s bacon. “Actually, I haven’t suggested this to him yet.” Steve’s eyebrows almost disappeared under his blond hair. “No, see, it’s my birthday gift to him,” she explained, through the nervous knots in her stomach. She swallowed the food with difficulty.

Steve’s eyebrows travelled back down his forehead. “Oh, okay,” he nodded. “And you’re asking my opinion because I might be old-fashioned? I think that’s just me. Bucky’s different.”

“I _know_ he is,” Natasha responded back with a bit more vehemence that she intended, but it probably passed as her just being a grouch.

Steve didn’t seem bothered. He resumed his half-eaten bacon, appetite undisturbed. “Who did you plan to do it with? The third…fondue-er.”

“You.”

Steve choked. Natasha waited patiently for him to be able to speak again. “Come again?”

Natasha maintained eye contact with him across the table, looking like a detective interrogating a suspect. “I see how he looks at you. I see how you look at him. I think you two bozos have had a thing for each other for years.” Ignoring the strange look flitting across Steve’s face, she carried on, “And I’m okay with that – just, get this out of your systems once and for all.” The words flowed right out of her. She wasn’t Natasha, she was the Black Widow.

Steve’s mouth was still open.

“Steve. Say something.”

Steve looked around desperately as if he was expecting someone to materialize out of thin air and help him. Maybe Vision.

“You old fool. You crashed a plane in the Arctic and _this_ is what fazes you?”

“In my defense, that was a completely different situation!”

“Look, you don’t have to say anything _right now_. I’m just putting it on the table. I understand if it’s…I don’t know, _bizarre_.” She rubbed her hand over her face. “God, I’m making this sound like a business proposition.”

Steve looked like he was struggling to gather his thoughts and he looked like he was struggling even more trying to put those thoughts into words. “Natasha, you know that Bucky and I weren’t like that.”

“Steve.”

“I just want to be _clear_ with you.”

“I am clear.”

Steve paused, like he had prepared a long speech but Natasha had made him skip the pleasantries, leaving him fumbling for words. “And you think Bucky would be okay with this?”

“I don’t know. I think so.”

Steve settled into his seat, as if considering it. “Wow, I… Wow.”

“Yeah.”

Steve didn’t say anything more, just stared into space, his head moving about like he was rattling and dislodging the thoughts in his head.

“Might be good for him. I don’t know. You’re as 1940s Brooklyn as 1940s Brooklyn could ever be without actually having to go back to Brooklyn in 1940.” She paused. That was a mouthful. “His therapist thinks it would make him feel better.”

Steve raised an eyebrow. “His therapist has pretty imaginative remedies.”

“No, no. It’s my idea. I just meant the part about anchoring him.”

“Huh.”

“He’s not well, Steve.”

“Then you’re the one with imaginative remedies.”

Natasha shrugged. “I can be pretty generous.”

“Huh.”

**

“ _What_?” Bucky exclaimed, stepping away from her. Natasha sighed. The routine was almost perfect. “Na _ta_ sha, are you _crazy_?”

“If you wanted to explore, James, I’m not going to hold you back.” She resumed dancing by herself. Seeing as her partner was currently having an aneurysm.

She saw how he looked at him. How they looked at each other. And she was okay with it. She was okay.

“But this is _Steve_!”

Natasha couldn’t explain the little sinking feeling she felt deep in the pit of her stomach. She twirled away from him and stretched, trying to _un_ -sink it and simultaneously make the conversation seem like it wasn’t a big deal. Of course, Steve was so pure, so untouchable…

“I ran it by him. He said he’s game if you were.”

“You…ran it by him? Without telling me –”

“We thought it could help you.”

“We?”

“Fine. _I_ thought it could help you.”

Bucky stared at her like she was the one slowly losing her mind, when it really was the other way around.

“We just wanted you to feel better!” Natasha almost shouted, her voice colored by multiple shades of frustration, all façade falling off of her. She was instantly ashamed by her own outburst. “I yelled at you. I’m sorry. _God_.”

Bucky didn’t really respond.

Natasha walked to the gramophone she bought him and turned off the old music they had been dancing to.

“I really don’t know what else to do,” she said quietly. “I just feel so…so helpless. Watching you. It’s like you’ve been sleepwalking – actually, you’re more present even then – at least you had character even if you had one hand around my throat.” She didn’t have to see; she _felt_ Bucky flinching, but she trudged on. “It feels like you’ve been gone for so very long and I just want you back.”

“But I’m standing right in front of you!” he retorted.

“Most days you’re just floating through walls, James.”

Bucky snickered at the last part. “So I really am a ghost story.”

“We just wanted to bring you back,” Natasha quickly backtracked. “Steve’s obsessed with giving you something familiar. He said you didn’t take to Brooklyn very well –“

“That’s an understatement. Why didn’t he just say it like it is?” Bucky’s blue ice started taking on this icy quality, like they always did when he was mad. He ran a hand through his hair agitatedly. “That I got confused, and started looking for my ma until Steve brought to me her grave. With a,” he pinched his thumb and forefinger together save for an inch of space, “tiny little bullet hole in her headstone. Had to drag me back kicking and screaming like a child.” He turned away from her, pretending to fiddle with Natasha’s nail polish bottles on the dresser, his fury hanging like a thick cloud. “Forgot she’s dead. Maybe HYDRA made me kill her.” He took a deep breath to calm his rage before the situation escalated. “I should have never come into this world.”

Natasha caught his face in the mirror and something about it chipped her heart. “James. Don’t talk like that.”

“What, you two can talk about me behind my back and I’m not allowed to talk about myself?” He turned to look at her, making her see just how much meant what he was saying. “Just stop, okay? About this whole thing.”

“I’m sorry if I offended you.”

Bucky scoffed. “I may be raised in the 40s but I’m not a prude. I know what I want and it’s you.”

“I know.”

“Then what? There’s only two people in this relationship and it’s _me_ , and _you_.”

“I _know_.” Natasha hung a discarded jacket over the back of a chair. “It’s not about that at all. I keep telling you.

Bucky sighed. ”And what, Steve _agreed_?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Punk.”

Natasha shrugged. She sat down near the foot of the bed and took off her ballet shoes. Her feet were throbbing in them. It had been a long time. “He had you first.” She cracked a toe joint.

“What was that?” His voice was so soft, so tender, especially compared to how angry it had been just before.

Natasha felt her eyes burning. She rubbed her foot, one ankle over a knee, trying to relieve one of the aches she was feeling. “You had a life together. Back then.”

“God, _Natalia_.” Bucky sounded so exasperated. She could hear him walking towards her and getting down on his knees. His face appeared near her elevated foot. “We grew up together. And there was just that one time. Everyone did it back in the war. I mean, almost everyone, I guess. You _know_ what you mean to me.”

“When you realized I was missing, you went to Steve.” Her voice trembled very slightly.

“What are you talking about?”

“Yesterday morning. You went straight to Steve’s apartment.”

Bucky blinked a few times, trying to orient himself. “I don’t know. God. I don’t know – it was a reflex. Decades in the making.” Natasha stroked his hair gently. There was nothing she could say that he hadn’t just said himself. As if understanding her train of thought, he told her, “He’s my _best friend_ , Natasha.” He laid his forehead against her knee. “It’s _platonic_.”

“It’s a little more than that. Sometimes we love a friend so much the line starts to blur.” Natasha could read the frustration clearly on his face when he looked back up at her. “You went through a lot together.”

“No. I… Natalia.” He held her onto her legs gently but firmly. He sighed so deeply like he could expel every single irritation lingering inside of him. “You are my beginning and my end and everything else in between.”

Natasha nodded. “I know that.”

“Then _why_?”

“Because you need him just as much.”

“Not…not the way I do _you_!” He looked deep into her green eyes, beseeching. “I don’t know what else I can do or say to make you understand. You were the only thing that kept sane when I had no idea who I was or who I worked for or what I even stood for. I would have set fire to entire cities and burned myself along with it just to fucking end it all. Whatever it is that I…with Steve, it’s _nothing_ like the way I feel about you.” She could see his confusion tearing him apart, like it pained him.

Natasha untangled her legs so Bucky was between them. “I know that, too,” she said gently, cradling his face in her hands. “But if there was something, anything at all, that I could give you to take back what they robbed from you, how could I not?”

Bucky rocked back onto his heels. “Jesus _Christ_ , Talia.”

“He was your home.”

“That’s you now!”

“They stole things from me too. I know how it feels. I would never change a thing if it would have kept me from meeting you, but I can’t have any of it back and _you can_.” Bucky turned his face away, so she reached out her hands to gently guide him to look at her again, keeping his eyes steady on hers. “I would go to the edge of the universe for you if there was something there I thought you needed.”

“Nothing and _no_ _one_ can undo the damage HYDRA’s done to me, but you’re as close as it gets.”

“Well. Think of it as your birthday gift,” she offered. “It doesn’t have to be so deep. Just let me do this for you.”

Bucky shook his head in disbelief. “My God, you’re so serious about this.”

“I kinda am.”

“Natasha. Holy shit.”

She slid off the bed and sat on the floor with him. “If it would in any way help you resolve things with yourself…”

Bucky’s eyes were glassy. “You would really go that far?”

“Without hesitation.”

Bucky shook his head. “You don’t _have_ to.” The tension was dissipating. He seemed more tired than upset.

“There are things Steve has that I can’t give you,” she said softly.

“I don’t need those things.” His voice went so low it broke.

“I _want_ you to have them.”

Bucky just stared at her, his stubborn chin trembling, so many unspoken words falling short of reaching his lips. She caressed his face with her fingertips, her knuckles, just touching him – his sad, beautiful eyes that changed color from blue to gray like the sky, his cheekbones, his defined jaw, his lush bottom lip. He bent forwards and laid his forehead on her shoulder. Her fingers snaked through his long hair, lightly scratching the scalp at the nape of his neck. He wrapped his mismatched arms around her, holding her close, stroking her spine. Eyes closed, she breathed him in, inhaling all of him from his skin down to his soul.

She wished with her entire being that it wouldn’t come to it but if it did, if it awoken something or created a new dynamic between Bucky and Steve, she would be the one to bow out. It was only right – HYDRA had stolen a life that Bucky could have had with Steve, and now was their second chance. She knew Bucky – more versions of Bucky, at least – had fifty years with him – give or take all the times they got separated by circumstances – over Steve, but she would remove herself from the equation, make herself disappear if he were to stop needing her, the moment things started changing.

No one has ever found her when she didn’t want to be found. She was good at that.

**

Bucky was sitting cross-legged on the bed, his hair tucked behind an ear. He seemed tense and nervous, his back ramrod straight, the bedspread white and pristine under him.

He looked almost virginal. Sacrificial.

Natasha crawled over the pillows and mounds of covers towards him, wearing nothing but her black bra and matching panties. “It’s okay,” she whispered into his mouth.

He ate her words almost immediately, melting against her lips, his own tongue chasing hers. She sat up high on her knees, her palms resting on his broad shoulders – the flesh one radiating heat like a furnace, the metal one cold and biting in comparison. He trailed kisses down her jaw, her neck, and down her chest.

Natasha wound an arm down Bucky’s back, the other hand gripping his hair. She turned her head a fraction to glance behind her. “Come on over, Steve,” she breathed.

Steve had been standing at the foot of the bed, observing them. He watched as Bucky kissed Natasha’s breasts, and Bucky’s hooded eyes suddenly shifted and made eye contact with him. A long, unbroken one, even as he continued working on Natasha with his reddened lips.

Steve felt intrusive, yet so very welcomed.

He climbed over, feeling slightly awkward and unsure. Natasha twisted in Bucky’s lap and pulled Steve over by the chin. Bucky’s breath was hot next to her ear, his heart racing and chest heaving against her spine, fingers teasing down the front of her panties. She guided Steve’s mouth upon hers, soft and hesitant. It was nothing like that time at the mall when they were undercover and Natasha had simply grabbed him and went for it.

She pushed Bucky backwards and pulled Steve forwards, and all three of them were horizontal. She was laying on Bucky’s chest with Steve holding his own weight up over both of them, still kissing her. Next thing she knew, Steve’s face was next to her instead of hovering above, and he was kissing Bucky. Trapped and tangled between their arms, she didn’t turn to look – they deserved to have this special moment, after _seventy_ _years_. Bucky was still fingering her, his tempo never faltering, and she hooked her legs over Steve’s hovering waist, dry humping him.

Once it was clear that she and Bucky had broken Steve and stripped him off his shyness like a snake shedding its skin, she slid out from between them. Bucky’s fingers froze where she had been, the tips moist, and she sucked on his digits while his metal fingers tangled in Steve’s blond hair, watching as their make out get more intense.

“Up,” she commanded, around Bucky’s fingers.

She was no HYDRA, but Bucky obeyed her with so much devotion, lifting Steve together with him using only his chest, hands still occupied with Natasha’s mouth and in Steve’s hair. Natasha pushed his fingers away and lightly massaged Steve’s balls, who had made himself comfortable in Bucky’s lap. His hand gripped Bucky’s metal shoulder so hard it could have dented if it wasn’t made of vibranium, while the other returned Natasha’s favor through Bucky. Natasha didn’t think he had it in him. Obviously, she was wrong.

Natasha crawled behind Bucky, feeling like a puppet master.

“Hey, hey, come here,” Bucky gasped, breaking away from Steve to kiss her hungrily. She indulged him, snaking a hand up around his throat and _squeezed_. Bucky choked into her mouth, metal hand fisting in the sheets, the other one sinking claws into Steve’s shoulder.

“Whoa,” Steve panted, watching them.

“He likes it,” Natasha said against Bucky’s hot, gasping breaths on her tongue. She broke away from him, still keeping a tight grip around his neck, and beckoned Steve. She saw his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed before kissing Bucky’s breathless lips. Bucky’s hips bucked into Steve’s as he gasped desperately into his mouth, face turning red.

Steve reached up over Bucky’s head to kiss Natasha – God, the woman was amazing – over Bucky’s wheezing sounds. Bucky was rutting against Steve’s knees, his legs kicking as Natasha continued choking him. After a few more seconds of listening to his dwindling, whistling breaths, Natasha decided that even super-soldiers needed to breathe – especially one who was no longer a super-soldier, and released her hold. He sagged against her breasts, coughing and gasping and panting. Before he could even catch his breath, Natasha hooked her inner elbow against his bruised throat again as Steve watched. Bucky’s hands scrabbled along her arm. A quick learner, Steve gathered Bucky’s wrists and held him down, kissing his heaving chest down to his abdomen and down to his crotch.

Bucky’s struggles became a little more sporadic, his gasps a little more desperate.

“We’ll take care of you,” Natasha whispered into his ear. To Steve, she said, “Get him.”

Steve pulled down Bucky’s underwear and took his entire length without difficulties, like he was used to it. He withstood Bucky’s jerking kicks as Bucky writhed between him and Natasha, feet seeking purchase. Bucky started whimpering, and his gasps became an urgent sound. Natasha didn’t have to tell Steve he was close. Just before his blue eyes rolled back into his pretty little head, both Natasha and Steve released him at once in perfect synchronization.

Natasha let him sink onto the bed, chest heaving and gasping harshly, semi-conscious but still hard. She crawled over him, and took Steve inside her mouth. Steve’s breathing hitched, his hands tangling in her red hair. His breathing was almost as erratic as Bucky’s. She slid him in and out of her throat, not gagging even once. The Red Room taught her well.

“Nat – Nat, I’m close,” Steve groaned, gently cupping her head in place to stop her. It _was_ Bucky’s birthday gift, after all.

“James, you wanna finish him?” she asked, the exact same words she used whenever they were in a battle and she saved Bucky’s favorite villain last for him. Bucky’s breathing should have slowed down to long, deep pants by now but he was still breathing too quickly. She turned around. “James?”

Bucky’s eyes were wide and terrified, his chest rising and falling too quickly, face pale and body coated in a light sheen of sweat. His limbs seem stiff and his muscles strained.

“Is that...is that normal?” Steve panted, his urgent need as high as his confusion.

Natasha untangled herself completely from Steve, crawling towards Bucky. She knew that look on his face. “James, honey, it’s okay, you’re okay.” She laid a hand over his heaving chest. “Slow down, honey. You gotta breathe. I’m here. I’m here.”

Steve peeked carefully over Natasha’s shoulder. He knew how Bucky would sometimes confuse him for Pierce. As expected, Bucky rolled off the bed at the sight of him and walked straight into the bathroom, the breaths still heaving in and out of his lungs too quickly. He shut the door behind him.

“Did he confuse me for that son of a bitch again?” Steve asked, feeling hurt and very naked – literally and figuratively.

“I don’t know,” Natasha said quietly as Steve fished around between the sheets for his discarded underwear. She headed for the bathroom and knocked very lightly on the door. “James?”

“Go away,” she heard him sob. “Please just go away.”

Natasha had always respected Bucky’s need for space and privacy – the need at its highest during the moments that mattered most, when she wanted to hold him the most – and even right now, against her own voice yelling at her that something was very wrong, she couldn’t go against the decision to leave him to his devices. She had done enough damage. He probably didn’t want to see her ever again.

“Just…come out when you’re ready, okay? You don’t even have to talk to me if you don’t want to. You don’t even have to look at me. I just need to know you’re okay.”

Bucky was quiet.

Steve stood awkwardly a few feet away. “Call his psychiatrist?” he whispered, fearing even the sound of his voice would be triggering towards Bucky.

Natasha shook her head. The last time she did that, her phone travelled from Bucky’s metal fist into a hole in the wall, embedded there until Natasha remembered it again. She settled down against the door, listening to Bucky desperately trying to quell his sobs. “I’ll just sit here. It’s fine.” Steve still stood there, clutching his shirt to his bare chest. “You should go.”

Despite feeling confused and helpless, his blond hair sticking up like chicken feathers, he knew she was right. He turned around and left the room, his steps awkward like his body was fighting his moving feel.

“James?” Natasha could faintly hear the sound of his muffled, hiccupping breaths over the sound of running water. She couldn’t see through the door, but if she could, she knew what she would find; Bucky with his metal fist shoved into his own mouth to stop the uncontrollable sobs tearing through him, curling up in the tub full of cold water. The coldness of the cryo chamber had become a comfort to him, a familiarity, which he tried to replicate through any means possible, no matter how agonizing it might be.

He had done this so many times that despite it going against Natasha’s instinct to protect him, she had learned to let him be. He always came out eventually, even if it was the morning after – dripping wet and shaking violently, lips blue and teeth chattering. There was nothing she could do.

But he wasn’t a super-soldier anymore.

“James, please, come out,” she whispered, hand splayed over the door. He felt miles away. She strained to listen over the sound of gushing water but to no avail. She kept her hand on the smooth, cold surface of the door, wishing he was on the other side, reaching for her too. She knew he wasn’t.

If he could just come back to her, be her James again, her Yasha. Be Steve’s Bucky, even. She could take that. She would.

Natasha pulled her knees up to her chest, tucking her head in and curled into a ball. Why did everything always have to go so wrong? Why couldn’t they ever catch a break?

Weariness was tugging at her bones, making her limbs heavy and mind sluggish. It was her own body’s defense mechanism, protecting her from an overwhelming wave of sadness. She’d seen it happen to Bucky way too often to be healthy – he would sleep for days at a time, waking only to go to the bathroom and have a glass of water, and go right back to sleep.

She didn’t know what else to do.

**

The first thing Natasha realized was that she was _cold_. And _wet_.

The second thing she realized was that she had fallen asleep.

And the third thing she realized was that Bucky was still inside the bathroom.

“ _James_?” The water was overflowing from underneath the bathroom door, where Natasha had been leaning against. God, she was so _tired_. “FRIDAY?” Fuck Bucky’s privacy. His life mattered more. She wished she had decided based on this order of priority before. “FRIDAY, open the door.”

“Apologies, Miss Romanoff,” the AI responded, voice seeping into the room. “Mr. Barnes had specifically requested that the door stayed shut.”

“This is my door too and I want it open. _Now_.”

“I apologize, Miss Romanoff,” FRIDAY repeated. “You do not have authority to override Mr. Barnes’ request. He has the system hacked into and locked.”

Natasha clenched her fists. Would it really kill Stark to install _doorknobs_? “Fuck this,” she muttered and kicked at the door. Normally she would avoid this sort of violence as it would drive him even further into an episode but she was finally learning to weigh priorities over one another.

The door was foolproof and so… _solid_ that no matter how hard Natasha kicked, nothing buckled.

The water was still flooding into the room.

“James?” she yelled. “James, say something or I swear to God and anyone else who would listen, I will blow this door down.”

Radio-silence.

Her heart began to pound as she dashed to her weapon stash, leaving a track of footprint-shaped puddles, and grabbed the lowest-collateral damage bomb she could find. She raced back to the door and stuck it on before taking a few steps backwards.

In the few seconds it took for the bomb to detonate, she hoped and prayed that Bucky wasn’t near the door.

The explosion didn’t cause much damage, seeing how tough the door was – just a hole big enough for Natasha to climb through. Her gaze panned frantically over the room, looking for Bucky before landing on the overflowing tub. Bucky was inside it, head beneath the surface. His hair floated around his face and the rest of his body lay sprawled, filling up the space.

He looked dead and ethereal.

Slipping on the water, Natasha all but crawled over to him, the water splashing around clumsily. “No. God. No, no.” Her voice trembled, as did her body – from fear or the cold, she didn’t know. Bucky’s skin was freezing to the touch, slipping through her fingers, but she managed to get his head above water before even thinking of turning off the tap, set to the coldest – _for_ fuck’s _sake, James_ – and tried to drag him over the lip of the tub.

His skin was pale and his lips a bluish tint. How long had he been drowning while she was sitting right outside the door, _asleep_?

“James, wake up, baby, wake up,” Natasha chanted, muscles straining with the effort of trying to lift him out. His head lolled listlessly, the ends of his hair floating in the water. She could tell he wasn’t breathing. “FRIDAY?” she yelled. “Get a fucking doctor!” She managed to get him sitting up halfway at least, head propped up against the cold wall. Slipping one hand over the back of his bare shoulders and another around his waist, she strained every muscle in her body trying to heave him up over the edge of the tub one more time. The water cascaded over his bluish skin as his body emerged from the water, his hair sticking to his jaw and neck. His waterlogged metal arm made everything so much harder that Natasha wanted to just rip it off of him. Water sloshed everywhere, her feet skidding against his weight.

“Miss Romanoff, I am truly sorry.” Natasha’s stomach sank. FRIDAY apologizing was never a good thing today. “Mr. Barnes had overridden my system with his cellphone.”

He did _all this_ , and she was _right there._ Natasha was never going to forgive herself.

Grunting with the exertion of trying to navigate Bucky’s weight, Natasha’s head swiveled over the room wildly, looking for his phone. Instead, she caught sight of a bottle of pills that had floated a few feet away, bobbing lightly in the water.

“Get _Tony_ , at least.” Making sure his head stayed above surface, Natasha snatched the empty bottle and rushed back to him, reading the label. It was once a full bottle of Vicodin – in super-soldier doses. She felt sick.

“I am unable to do that, Miss Romanoff.”

“Well, what _can_ you do?!” Natasha barked. The bottle cracked in her fist.

Just then, Steve came barreling through what was left of their bathroom door. “Oh God,” he breathed, rushing towards Bucky, who remained unresponsive and whose upper body was hanging awkwardly in Natasha’s shaking arms.

“He’s not breathing,” Natasha told Steve.

Steve lifted the rest of Bucky’s body easily out of the frigid water and laid him on his back on the flooded floor. He nudged Bucky’s chin upwards and started breathing for him, between pumping his chest.

“Come on, James. Breathe. Come on,” Natasha sobbed.

Bucky’s body moved bonelessly under Steve’s hands, water rippling around him as his body jolted, eyes shut and hair floating about his face and shoulders, looking like a sleeping angel. In other circumstances, Steve’s artistic fingers would have scrambled for a pencil and etch it down onto paper, turning it into a masterpiece.

Steve’s clasped hands kept pumping him so hard that Natasha heard an audible crack.

“Just keep going,” Natasha instructed. Fishing inside Steve’s pants for his cellphone while he continued compressions on Bucky’s chest, she prayed that this was all a nightmare. That she would wake up in Bucky’s loving arms and find that everything was as it should be. That he was hers and hers alone, like he had always been, but without the guilt of feeling like she had stolen him.

She wished she had never found out about him and Steve.

When Steve’s phone was finally sitting in the palm of her wet hand, she realized that this nightmare was far from over. “FRIDAY?” Natasha’s voice was cracking with barely concealed panic and agitation. “No signal!”

FRIDAY may just be a user interface computer system, but the bleak tone of her voice was heartbreakingly human. “Doors and elevators are also locked on each floor.”

Natasha felt the air seize in her lungs. Bucky was always so thorough. _No room for mistakes_. There was a reason he was HYDRA’s most valuable asset, their prized possession – despite how poorly they treated him.

“I was in your living room,” Steve got out quickly before taking a breath and blowing it down Bucky’s airway.

Two. Two of them and they both failed Bucky.

He went back to pumping air into Bucky’s lungs, Bucky’s nearly lifeless body moving only with the force of his compressions. “Come on, pal,” he panted.

Natasha’s fingers scrambled across the screen of Steve’s phone anyway, looking for ways she could get it back online. She tried to get the firewall down, which was so easy she should be able to do it with her eyes closed, but wasn’t. All the offline applications Stark had designed specifically for emergencies had crashed, and the debugging process kept failing. Bucky had changed the entire programming language of every Stark Tech device, along with their software and computing system. Natasha couldn’t figure the language out – for all she knew, he had probably created his own. She didn’t even know that was possible.

Another strange pop from underneath Steve’s hands snapped Natasha’s attention back to Bucky just in time for her to see water gushing out of his mouth and nose as he choked. Steve couldn’t roll him onto his side without drowning him even further in the flooded bathroom, so he sat him up and pitched him forward, balancing him with a palm under his chest and the other hitting his back, trying to beat the water out of his struggling lungs. Bucky didn’t seem to be awake, barely gasping for air between the torrents of water escaping his blue lips.

Once he had gotten some air in his lungs, Natasha stuck her fingers down his throat.

“What are you—“

“He OD’d.”

Eyes barely open, a stream of watery pill-vomit fountained out of him as he rasped wetly. Steve kept him sitting up, rubbing gentle circles into his back. Natasha stuck her fingers down his throat again and again until she was sure he was completely empty. HYDRA made him do things that had robbed him of his gag reflex, but Natasha’s training encompassed overcoming that.

Bucky sagged forwards, held up only by Steve’s palm, his breaths whistling. He had passed out again. His drenched hair curtained his face.

“I’m gonna get help.” Natasha ran through the water to get to Tony when she found out that FRIDAY was right – the whole system had been shut down. The elevators were not working and the door to the stairs couldn’t be accessed, as the retina scan wasn’t operating. Natasha punched in passwords instead, which did nothing. She decided to pack it in and move on, blood prickling with regret for wasting precious time.

“ _Vision_!” Natasha screamed, on the off-chance he could somehow hear her from floors away and materialize through the walls. She found her StarkPad and thumbed it frantically, trying to activate the Quinjet via remote control. Nothing. “ _VISION_!”

The only option left was to scale the building.

Even the glass was foolproof, so Natasha had to blow them up with the same model of low-collateral bomb. Any higher and it would severely injure someone. The force of the detonation only cracked the surface, so she had to kick through what was left to completely demolish the windows. Making a mental note to remind Tony that safety features could work both ways, she activated her Widow gear and began climbing the walls. 

Successfully breaking through Tony’s window, Natasha dashed straight into his lab, yelling his name. Tony was already working on rebooting the system, staring so closely at a huge holographic screen like he wanted to jump inside it. He looked both wide awake and sleep rumpled.

“Did you just…crash through my window?” he asked, unbothered, confused eyes briefly noting the shards of glass on Natasha’s lingerie and some scratches on her skin. She had forgotten to put clothes on.

“James needs a doctor _right_ _now_ ,” Natasha said, “and we’re trapped.”

Tony straightened up immediately in his seat, like he just located his spine. “All of us. No one in, no one out.” His fingers flew crazily over the hologram, pulling this, pushing that, shifting and closing down window applications. “Unless, through a window.”

“ _Now_ , Stark.” Yesterday, to be more accurate. Or maybe 1944.

Tony nodded distractedly, moving from one screen to the other, fingers never slowing down. “Trying my level best here. All algorithms are disrupted. What programming language even is this?”

“Where’s Wanda and Vision?” If anyone could transport Bucky to a fucking hospital, those two were her only hope.

“I don’t know. I’m not their keeper,” Tony grumbled, struggling with a PIN code. “Nothing works, _dammit_.” Then he said, “Oh. Yeah. They’re in New Orleans.”

“The Quinjet. That’s all we need. I will throw him out the window if I have to.” Her words came out fast but calm and authoritative.

Tony nodded. “Trying to get it online. Hey. What’s wrong with him?”

Natasha was already walking away to get back to Bucky. “Tried to kill himself,” she answered without even a glance over the shoulder. “Derailed your entire system to make sure it gets done.”

She jumped back out the way she came; like the spider she was. When she reached the disaster of a bathroom again, she found Steve holding Bucky up under the shower spray. The water was so warm Natasha could see steam rising.

“He’s in and out,” Steve said, eyes squinting underneath the shower. “Gotta keep him awake.”

Natasha deposited all her gadgets outside the bathroom door, well out of Bucky’s reach – as highly unlikely as it was that he would be able to stay conscious long enough to use them. “Is he warming up?”

Lines of distress were etched into Steve’s forehead. “Slightly. Where’s Tony?” he asked, shifting his grip on Bucky, whose sickly pallor was starting to improve just a little a bit. He still looked like a wax statue. The rivulets of water cascading down their bodies were making Steve lose his grasp. Bucky jostled in his arms like a ragdoll, water dripping off of him and sticking his hair to his ashen face.

“He’s on it.”

“Here.” Steve transferred some of Bucky’s weight to rest on Natasha so he could reach out and flip down the lid of the toilet seat. They sat Bucky down and Steve immediately rushed to the sink.

Bucky’s lips were still blue and his face deathly pale. Natasha stroked his wet hair back and pried his eyelids up. His pupils had shriveled to tiny pinpoints. He moaned something right before his eyes rolled back inside his head.

“Stay with me.” Natasha tapped his cheek rapidly. His mouth fell open and again he attempted to say something, but he blacked out and his jaw went slack. His breathing sounded like it had gotten worse. Natasha had never felt so helpless, and coming from her, that statement carried a lot of weight. She wished she could hold onto him so tight to keep the life from escaping him; she wished she could _breathe_ for him.

Steve came back with a steaming glass of water. Natasha gently brought it to Bucky’s blue, parted lips. She tilted the glass, tipping its contents into his mouth. He choked on it a little.

“Slowly, baby, come on,” she encouraged him. She continued pouring as long as he was swallowing, hoping it would help him warm up a little bit more, until the water dribbled out of the corners of his mouth. His head sagged to the side and Natasha guided it to rest against her shoulder.

Steve measured the pulse on Bucky’s right wrist. “How much longer is Tony going to take?”

Right on cue, Tony’s voice sounded from the speakers. “Quinjet coming your way.”

This was why Natasha never doubted Tony.

Steve didn’t need to be prompted – he scooped Bucky up and instinctively headed towards the floor-to-glass window Natasha had broken through, tracking water all the way. Tony sat in the pilot seat. He looked at Bucky with sympathy, before sharply tearing his gaze away.

The sun was just starting to peek from the horizon, casting an orange glow. It was a rough morning.

Tony popped the hatch open as close to the ledge as possible. Steve and Natasha carried and dragged a limp Bucky between them into the Quinjet. Natasha wasted no time grabbing an oxygen mask and strapped it onto Bucky’s cold face while Steve tore through the storage units for a blanket.

With Tony steering them, they arrived at the medical wing of the Tower where everything was fully-functioning again. A medical team stood waiting for them on the helipad. Natasha watched as they stuck various needles into Bucky’s only flesh arm and wheeled him away, his soaked hair so dark it was a stark contrast to his skin which was as white as the sheets.

“How did you work it out?” Natasha asked flatly. She felt strangely detached from the whole situation now that the adrenaline had left her body. The wind whipped her straggly hair almost painfully against her face, but she barely felt it.

“You said Manchurian Candidate hacked the system. I looked up HYDRA’s database to see what else they could have taught him to use against enemies.”


	3. I’m too damaged to not be losing my mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky gets locked up in the mental hospital.  
> Natasha remembers something she probably shouldn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P/S: Very graphic depictions of rape. Please be warned.

Natasha thought she would have grown accustomed to waiting rooms by now but it never got easier; now that she had people she cared for. The sterile white floors, the hushed silence, the impending dread. Bucky was in an emergency room not a few floors away, but he felt so far from her, the farthest he had ever been. And that was saying a lot.

She missed him, and it felt like she had been missing him for a while.

“Coffee?” Tony shoved a steaming paper cup in her face.

Natasha took it, and downed it in one gulp, barely tasting it. It burned her throat, in a good way. She distantly heard Tony offering one to Steve, and heard Steve politely refusing.

“Banner’s working on blood tests – got him on the phone a few minutes ago. He slept through the whole thing,” Tony said, fingers swiping away on a StarkTablet. “Oh, got another one.” Natasha heard Sam’s tinny, groggy voice come in through the speakers of Tony’s device but couldn’t make out what he said. She only caught Tony’s end of the phone call, saying “Med wing. Barnes.”

Staring intently at nowhere in particular, Natasha realized she had been clenching her teeth. Then Tony was there, tapping her fists, and she realized she had been clenching them too.

“I’m going to go wait for Sam,” Steve said, the tone he used too intense for such a casual statement. He walked away like he couldn’t wait to leave them. Natasha already knew Steve would re-emerge some time later with new bruises on his fists and a hole in the wall somewhere.

Tony, either oblivious or unbothered, sat down next to her and sighed. “I was going to ask the both of you but since I have only one of you here, one off doing God knows what – he really needs a one-on-one with Banner about anger management –and the other fighting for his life – _if_ he’s even fighting –“

Natasha glared at Tony so sharply it cut Tony off mid-sentence.

“Alright, sorry,” he apologized quickly. “Did Barnes have a nightmare?” He stretched out his legs tiredly. “A particularly bad one, specifically?”

Natasha felt her throat swelling, closing up, trying to keep it all from spilling out. She hid her face in her hands, struggling to maintain her composure.

“This must be bad,” she heard Tony mumble.

Natasha lifted her face, looked up at the ceiling and then down to the floor, feeling like she wanted to run from everything but at the same time, weighed down so heavily she was starting to suffocate.

Tony wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Someone had thrown a robe over her, and she realized belatedly that Tony had one on too over his tank-top.

“I failed him,” she said quietly.

Tony was silent for a moment. “I don’t think you could have.”

“But I did,” she insisted. “I made him do it.” She leaned her elbows forward on her knees, pulling her damp hair away from her face, looking at the floor. “It’s all my fault.”

“Talk to me.”

Natasha pulled the robe tighter around herself. “We had a three-way. It was my idea.”

Tony was quiet for a few seconds too long. “The two of you and Steve?”

Natasha nodded, wiping a stray tear angrily with the back of her hand. She hated herself so much.

“Was it…that bad?”

“Shut up, Tony.”

“No, seriously, what went wrong?”

Natasha fought a sob from escaping her hollow chest. “I don’t know. He just _panicked_ and locked himself in the bathroom. The cold water helped him cope.” Natasha sighed. “By the way, Tony, manual locks and doorknobs next time. Please. And less durable doors and windows.”

“Noted.”

Natasha sighed again. “I’m so stupid.”

“That’s why you haven’t been able to look at Steve,” Tony stated. “The most catastrophic séance à trois I’ve ever seen. You all have lived like, what, 250 years between the three of you and no one knew that the third person should always be a stranger? That’s the first rule in the book.”

Natasha shrugged, eyes observing her own faint reflection on the sterile floor. “It would kind of defeat the purpose.”

“There was a _purpose_ to this?”

“Tony, you’re not really helping –“

“He’s afraid of Steve?” Tony probably didn’t mean it, like he didn’t mean a lot of horrible things, yet it came out sounding more like a statement than the question he intended.

Natasha stared emptily ahead. “I think he still sees Pierce, sometimes.”

Now, Natasha hadn’t had the time to really go back and retrace her memories, but she suddenly had a flashback of Steve pinning Bucky’s wrists down while Natasha choked him. The way he had panicked with her fist around his throat, how he had desperately tried to fight Steve off when Steve had him in his mouth; how he had whimpered.

He had been terrified, and both she and Steve had mistaken it for pleasure. They both failed him. Again.

Her blood ran cold in her veins but hot in her ears. She shook her head and took a sharp intake of breath, looking away. She was worse than HYDRA. She knew him better than anyone else, better than _Steve_ , and she had hurt him like that – had _Steve_ hurt him like that. Like HYDRA did.

“What?” Tony asked. “You didn’t finish.”

Natasha balanced her elbows on her knees, hung her head down, and pressed her clenched fists into her temples. She felt like she couldn’t breathe, nor did she deserve to.

If Bucky didn’t make it out that door, Natasha was going to follow him. She had promised him that she would go with him to the ends of the world.

She used to think that for each person she had killed in the past, she would save a hundred more to atone for it but maybe it didn’t work like that.

**

“No!” Bucky roared so loudly that his voice broke in a few places, attempting to sit up. He swung a metal fist blindly and clumsily at a doctor, who managed to duck out of the way. Then he ripped the IVs out of his flesh arm and tried to get out of the hospital bed.

“He’s breaking through the sedatives!” a nurse exclaimed.

Sam and Natasha saw through the glass as another nurse tried to get close enough to him to get him sedated, but his metal fingers wound their way around her neck before anyone else could even move.

“There’s nothing – you can do to me – anymore,” he said weakly between harsh pants, respiration still impaired, although his body still seemed strong. He was probably running on nothing but sheer adrenaline.

“Out of my way!” Natasha pushed a doctor aside and charged through the door, tackling Bucky in one stride. Upon hitting the floor, his head cracked against the cold surface and he lost his grip on the poor nurse who crawled away coughing, hands around her throat.

“Get back! _Back_!” Sam warned the rest of the medical staff, who were more than glad to keep their distance from their crazed patient. A few remained stubborn, too curious for their own good. They lingered around to see the infamous Winter Soldier and Black Widow in action – Sam swore some even looked like they were getting off on it – but their self-preservation kicked in the minute Bucky, recovering from his disorientation, started screaming and lashing out at Natasha.

Cognitive recalibration unsuccessful.

Natasha dodged his punches easily, seeing how dazed and frail Bucky was. She was on top of him, legs bracketing his thighs and hands holding his shoulders down. He struggled like a trapped wild animal, howling and wailing, the back of his head smacking onto the floor over and over like he barely noticed it.

Sam picked up the discarded sedative, too far from Natasha’s reach, and stabbed it into Bucky’s neck before pressing down on the plunger. Bucky’s guttural screams instantly faded into low moans, and his struggles ceased into feeble, clumsy spasms, looking like he was convulsing, his hysteria dwindling down to random bursts of energy.

“You’re safe, James, I got you,” Natasha whispered, stroking his thin, hollowed cheek. He began crying, sobbing in earnest, his body movements turning sluggish – like the tears were draining all his energy with them. “Hush, honey. Shh.”

Sam let his knees buckle and plopped down onto the floor next to them. Bucky was trying to say something but it sounded like his tongue had become too heavy.

“What? What is it, baby?” Natasha asked, still straddling him, wiping the tears from his crumpled face.

It was so soft and slurred but Natasha heard it just the same, used to straining to hear Bucky all the times he was injured, sick, or _dying_ – or just fighting a nightmare. “Let me. Die. Please just – let me die.”

Natasha’s tears rolled down her face and splat onto Bucky’s chest.

“I didn’t stop him, I didn’t stop him,” he was saying but Natasha laid her shaking fingers over his lips.

“I’m sorry. It wasn’t Pierce. It was Steve. It was just Steve. I’m sorry.”

“I let him – I let him hurt you. I let him…” Bucky broke down into tears again, going in and out of consciousness.

Sam shifted uncomfortably next to Natasha, who was still reeling from Bucky’s strange choice of words. “Well don’t just stand there!” he barked at the medical team, who broke away and scurried into action.

“I should’a… I should’a died.”

There was a flurry of movement as more medical professionals arrive, rolling large equipment with them.

“Shh, don’t say that,” Natasha said, coming back into herself, stroking his damp hair gently.

Bucky continued rambling groggily, like he was falling asleep. His eyes were closed, the dark shadows underneath standing out against his sickly pale skin. “He took you. He… I watched. They took it away. Outta my. Head. Still in my brain. Brain.” He started sobbing again. “Inside me and, and inside you.” He stretched his muscles taut, like he was trying to crawl out of his skin. “Get it out of me,” he wept.

Sam’s eyebrows pinched together, glancing at Natasha to see if any of it made sense to her. It didn’t.

Natasha got off of Bucky when the medics brought over a gurney, going against her instincts to keep him close and hold him tight – never letting him go, especially now. She watched numbly for the second time that morning as they lifted him and rolled him away.

Watching pensively right next to her, Sam said, very quietly, eyes never leaving Bucky, “He needs help, man.” They could still hear Bucky talking incoherently, each syllable bleeding into the next. “I really don’t know I can do for him anymore.”

Natasha didn’t mean to, but she flinched away from Sam and jumped up to her feet.

Sam worked at the VA. He helped veterans with PTSD but he wasn’t a full-fledged therapist. Bucky’s sanity was fraying and it was unfair to expect Sam to carry the brunt of it – it wasn’t his responsibility. But it made her feel like Sam had gotten tired of him, of them, and that it was just Bucky and her against the world, the way it used to be.

“Nat,” Sam called after her, getting up.

“I get it,” Natasha replied more curtly than she intended, walking away. “Steve doesn’t need to know about any of this.”

She pushed each foot ahead of the other as fast as she could, not knowing where to go.

**

The next time Natasha saw Bucky, he was in a straitjacket.

Steve had been the first to set foot into his white-padded cell, because Natasha couldn’t bear to see him locked up like a deranged mental patient. It took less than ten minutes for Steve to reemerge from the cell, sobbing uncontrollably. They still hadn’t discussed any of the previous events, but they locked eyes and they knew, they were still a team.

When it was Natasha’s turn, she hoped she could last longer than Steve.

She folded herself down on the padded floor next to Bucky, trying to give off the illusion that she was comfortable and that this wasn’t a big deal. Stay here for a few days, get him fixed – or close enough to it – and take him home. It was fine.

Except it wasn’t. Her heart was breaking into tinier, tinier pieces with each second that ticked by.

“Hey, James.”

Bucky was huddled in the corner of the room, his tall stature and long limbs folded and scrunched up tight in the straitjacket, making him seem small and defenseless, like a cornered animal. His legs weren’t restrained but it was all curled up underneath him, like he didn’t know they weren’t tied up.

He was jittery, glancing up at her through the stringy hair in his tired, red-rimmed eyes. That was when Natasha noticed the shock collar around his throat.

It was hard to associate him with the widely feared, lethal assassin who took down the world’s biggest targets. He looked nothing like the Winter Soldier, or the charming Bucky Barnes. Not even the broken man she called James. What he did look like, was all of them mangled together into something beyond recognition.

Natasha stared at the red light blinking on the shock device. She wanted to crush it in her bare hands. How was this any different than the way HYDRA treated him?

“Do you know me?” she asked. She held her breath, waiting for his answer.

Bucky blinked once, almost lazily, the hair in his eyes moving with the tiny motion, getting caught in his long lashes. It broke Natasha seeing that he couldn’t even do himself a favor as simple as tucking his own hair back behind his ear. It broke her even more being forced to keep her hands to herself instead of helping, in case she startled him.

The blue eyes behind the brown strands bore into hers. “I’ll always know you,” he whispered back.

Natasha felt her face getting hot, her vision blurring. She blinked the tears away. “I’m so sorry.”

Bucky just rested tiredly against the padded wall. He let his eyes slide shut.

She crept closer towards him, gently brushing his hair out of his face. Despite the obvious resemblance, there was no way to recognize this ruined man in front of her as either Steve’s Bucky Barnes, HYDRA’s Winter Soldier, or her James. It was like someone took apart a piece from those three men and tried to create someone new, but they put him together all wrong.

Natasha didn’t know what to say. There were no words that could possibly make any of this better.

Bucky breathed wearily, the straitjacket keeping him in bondage and curled in on himself. He opened his tired eyes and looked away from Natasha.

Natasha reached out to hold his hand only to remember that it was tied up in the straitjacket somewhere. She laid it on his knee. He recoiled. Feeling like her hand was burning, she lifted it off immediately, hovering mid-air. It was then she saw that his left side was disproportionate to his right, and realized they had taken off his metal arm.

It took her off guard when Bucky finally spoke again.

“It would do everyone a great service if you just let them put me down.”

Natasha pressed a fist into her chest, like it could ease both the emptiness and heaviness that existed side by side in there.

“I don’t think,” Bucky said, _chuckling_ , “there’s any coming back from this.”

Natasha didn’t respond, so he kept talking.

“Have you been to one of these places before? I didn’t think it would be exactly like in the movies. Everything’s so… _clean_ all the time. I feel like a black sludge they should probably wash down the drain. All this white is blinding me. Jesus. All the places they sent me – never to one of these, somehow. Don’t cry, Talia. I’m okay. I’d prefer it if you were the one who tied me up, you know how I love getting tied down, but I don’t think they’ll listen to me. Talia. It’s okay. Really.”

All it did was make Natasha cry harder. She could almost literally feel pieces of herself shattering and breaking off into piles of rubbles around them. She sobbed so hard she folded over herself.

“Talia. Hey.” Bucky scooted closer towards her by digging his heels into the padded floor, propelling himself forwards. “Look at me. See? I’m okay.”

Natasha was sobbing so hard she could barely breathe, let alone speak. “I did this to you. I did this to you.”

“Talia.”

“I made you do it.”

Bucky helplessly tried to move in the straitjacket. “Talia, I can’t hold you.”

Natasha burst out laughing at the absurdity of it all, the tears still streaming down her face. Maybe she was losing her mind too. Maybe they would be kind enough to let them share a cell together.

“I’m sorry, baby,” he said pleadingly, voice hoarse from all the screaming. Have they been giving him water? Food? Did they feed it to him? Did they trust him to hold plastic utensils? Or would the shock collar incapacitate him if he tried? “I just couldn’t – I was selfish, I know. I couldn’t. I just had to go. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he said, like he didn’t just greet her by asking to be euthanized less than five minutes ago.

It wasn’t like he snapped out of nowhere, like he usually did. There was a whole thought process to this. He planned everything to perfection. It changed something in her perspective of him. She didn’t _judge_ him, of course not. Anyone who had been in his place and went through what he went through would have swallowed a bullet the first chance they get. It just made her think that maybe, maybe everyone was right. Maybe he was beyond saving, and that keeping him alive against his will was cruelty.

From this moment onwards, every time he told her he loved her, it would make her think that his desperation to fuck out of here was stronger than what he felt for her. That offing himself would remain his first priority. If he tried this once, he could try it again. It wasn’t anything personal, she understood that. She wasn’t self-absorbed or anything. But whatever it was he was going through, she felt like she was going through it for the both of them.

“Hey, hey. Babydoll. Don’t cry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

He seemed so spent that even his voice rang out flat and vacant. Like it was just his abused body sitting before her.

She let herself collapse into his chest, sobbing and wailing unashamedly into the coarse material. His arms – _arm_ – incapacitated, Bucky tried to make do by wrapping his legs around her, guiding her further into his lap. She curled into him, crying like she had never cried before. Putting up pretenses didn’t matter anymore – especially not in front of the one person who could see right through her anyway. The rest of the entire galaxy could witness her falling apart for all she cared. Fuck everything and everyone. Her entire world had shifted on its axis, tilted, everything knocked over into disarray.

Nothing mattered anymore, not when there was nothing left of James in this sad, cruel world – a world she had sworn to give her life defending, to wipe out the glaring red from her ledger. It was also simply because it would be selfish to have all these abilities and not put them to use on behalf of others in need. It was the only thing she had left to keep herself alive, now.

If Bucky couldn’t do the same, no one would think any less of him. He didn’t owe the world jackshit. Yet, most people would be happy to watch him execute himself.

Natasha wanted to set the entire galaxy ablaze.

“I’m not going anywhere, I’m not going anywhere,” he murmured into her hair. “I’m right here.” He tucked in his chin to drop a kiss onto the top of her head, and then rubbing it gently into her hair. The small gesture was so familiar, so intimately _him_ , it made Natasha ache. How was she supposed to live without this man?

She had known him since she was a child, goddammit. He had been the only one to show her kindness in the midst of all the violence. The only one who taught her to be more than what they trained her to be. They shaped her to be a ruthless weapon, but he kept her human underneath it all. There was no part of her that did know a part of him.

And they knew that. So they took him away.

Yet they had found their way back to each other, over and over, even when they were fighting on opposite sides and Bucky having had no memory of who she was. But she always got him back. That was the one constant throughout their lives. They were meant to be.

“We can’t keep doing this dance forever,” he sighed.

“Why not? It’s ours.”

After feeling like she had bawled herself blind, Natasha remained curled against Bucky’s chest, silent heaving sobs still wrecking through her frame.

She refused to think of the opposite side of the coin – that maybe there was also a reason fate kept tearing them apart.

“I don’t know who I was, or who I am. I haven’t been me in a long time I have no idea who that guy is anymore.”

“I don’t care, I don’t care,” Natasha assured him fervently. “You made me who I am. It’s you, and it always will be you. You don’t have to be anyone. You just have to be here.” She paused to try and swallow the lump in her throat that was threatening to choke her. “I need you in this life and I need you in the next. There is no me without you.”

She wondered if she was being selfish, forcing him to weather this never-ending storm for her sake. But she didn’t know what else to say. How do you convince someone who had lost everything, from his arm to his identity to his _whole life_ , to just be still?

Bucky curled his body protectively over hers, trying as best as he could to hold her one way or another, his spine resting against the padded wall like it had snapped from fatigue. Natasha could tell he was utterly drained and exhausted, the life leeched clean from his bones.

“Tell me how I can keep you,” she whispered through the choking sobs.

Bucky kissed her hair. “You already are.”

Natasha clutched at him harder through the straitjacket, like he might slip through her fingers if she didn’t. “I nearly lost you. Yesterday.”

A beat of silence, and Bucky said, “But today I’m still here.”

She could her the melancholy in his voice. The resignation. “And you don’t want to be.”

“But I do.” He said it so earnestly that Natasha believed him without a single doubt, despite the circumstances. “I just. Can’t.”

Natasha took in the sound of his heart beating against her ear; strong and _alive_ , even if he barely was. She felt like there was a timer somewhere, ticking away the borrowed time she had left with him.

“I swear, Talia,” he said quietly, like he was too tired to even move his lips. “I can’t go on like this.”

Natasha wished she was enough to save him from all this madness. She wasn’t.

She had saved the world over and over, but the one thing she couldn’t do was save the one man she loved.

“Everything’s – slipping away from me. Like little grains of sand through my fingers. There’s _so much_ in my head, I just – but absolutely nothing inside me. I. God. Every day, every single goddamn day, I’m just, I’m so _tired_.”

Shuri may have removed the triggers, but not even she couldn’t put him back together. Natasha doubted anyone could. Not even entire kingdoms could fix such a great fall.

“I tried – I’m trying, I just. I’m malfunctioning. Every hour is a struggle. I can’t even eat without feeling like it’s _wrong_. I can’t sleep. I don’t remember what being human feels like. This world is so…I’m so scared all the time. I’ve been a machine for so long I’ve forgotten how to live. No matter what I do. I just need everything to stop.” He made a weird sound, like something was stuck in his windpipe. “Every day I wake up and it’s the same shit all over again. Little triggers here and there. Some I can tip-toe around, some blow up in my face and hurt everyone who got too close.”

Natasha wanted to scream it in his face that she _didn’t_ _care_. She would snap herself in half if that was what it took to hold him up. He should know that by now.

“And I hear them, all the fucking time – screaming and begging for mercy. The look in their eyes as the life bled out of them. Babies. Mothers. I try to – I put my feet, one in front of the other, just to keep going, stumbling into walls, waiting for the moment I get to just lie in bed and turn off the light and forget. But I haven’t slept since 1944.” He laughed, the kind of laugh Natasha had never heard him make before. It was unnerving. “Did you know they kept me up for almost a month once? I was in the cryo chamber. My eyes stayed shut but I could feel everything. I could feel my blood crystalizing in my veins, my skin turning to ice. But I couldn’t make a sound. I was drowning the whole time. Shit was wild.”

Natasha couldn’t tell when he made the transition from laughing to full-on sobbing.

“They wouldn’t – wouldn’t just let me die. I wish I died when I fell off the train, I – I’d be grateful to just die once and be done with it.”

“James…”

“I keep dying. Over and over. It just never fucking ends,” Bucky wept, his voice dropping to a low drawl as his body sagged sideways along the wall. “Every day. And I’m still me.”

The position looked uncomfortable, his neck distorted at a weird angle, so Natasha supported the back of his neck to help him lie the rest of the way down on his side. Instead, he unceremoniously slumped even lower like a sack of potatoes, eyes never shifting from their trance-like state.

“I’m tired of being me. So tired,” he whispered, writhing on the soft padded floor, until his back was facing her, staring at nothing.

“What did you see?” Natasha asked bluntly. “Before you… When we were – did you see Pierce?” She had been nervous about bringing it back up when he seemed so stable, but they were well past that now by the looks of it.

“No,” Bucky responded lightly, like Natasha had merely asked him if he thought it would rain today. “I knew that was Steve.”

Natasha smoothed his tangled hair. “Then why?”

Even through the restrictive clothing, Natasha could see him trying to shrug, a gesture she had seen him done so many times.

“Pierce would take you. Or make you…take him. Stuff like that.”

Natasha’s fingers stiffened. His eyes seemed lost inside a memory he was reliving, his words slurred, each syllable bleeding into the next. “What are you talking about?”

“Pierce would fuck me senseless, remember?” He scrubbed his cheek against the floor. “Sometimes it wasn’t just me.”

The things Bucky said earlier on the hospital floor echoed in her mind. “James. I don’t understand.”

Bucky remained calm, looking like he was in a dreamlike state, his cadence unnaturally level. “There were times. You and him –“

“James, I would never.”

“Neither would I. He made me, anyway.”

“He never,” Natasha said, the inflection in her voice almost defensive, “made me do such things. No one did.”

Bucky had stopped blinking in a while now, voice as terrifyingly flat as ever. “I wish that was true.”

Natasha pressed her knees against his back, trying to get as close to him as possible, trying to get _through_ to him. “The first, and last time I saw him, was the day Fury riddled him through with bullets like Swiss cheese.”

Bucky’s lower lip trembled, and he bit it down. Tears sprung up in his blue eyes, as fluid as the ocean, and leaked from the corners, leaving damp stains on the cushioned floor underneath him. He was still staring at nothing. The thousand-yard stare.

“Please.” Natasha fought hard to keep her voice calm. “Talk to me.”

Bucky squirmed away from her, further into the wall, like he wanted it to swallow him whole. “He would make me watch him take you. Or make you watch him take me. Or he would make me take you in front of him. Or the other way around. Whatever he wanted.” His voice was bare audible, like he was too tired to push the words out, didn’t have enough air to, because he was too tired to even draw breath. The right side of his body jerked, and Natasha realized it was his right hand trying to scrub away the tears, moving on reflex. “You would scream. So hard. To get him to stop. And I just sat there.”

To think he had been so lucid just a moment ago.

Natasha cradled his head in her hands, getting him to look at her, her thumb stroking away the tears. “You have to listen to me. That never happened with us and Pierce. He did many things but that, _that_ , was not one of them.”

“He would – do shit. During.” Bucky’s eyes wandered away, traveling back to the memory inside his head. “Torture – all kinds. Choke me. Whip. Electrocute.”

Natasha knew this; Bucky developed these kind of kinks during sex. He was so used to being hurt that it brought him comfort, simply because it was familiar.

“It happened all the time, and I stopped caring. So he brought you in to join the fun. _Fun_ , he said. ‘It would be fun.’” He mimicked Pierce’s cold, condescending tone so accurately chills ran down Natasha’s spine. How could he have made that up, unless he really believed it had happened?

If they heard him raving looney tunes like this, they would have him locked up here forever.

His eyelids look like they were getting heavier.

“They fucked with your head – planted memories in you or something, to taunt you—“

“No, no. They – the Red Room – did that with you. To keep you loyal. HYDRA had lots of other ways to keep me coming back to them like a dog.”

“You have to listen to me,” Natasha begged desperately. “It wasn’t real. You have to know that. It wasn’t real.” She had feared for him so many times, but never like this. Unhinged had become his middle name but this…

“You don’t believe me,” Bucky whispered into the padded wall.

“I am telling you, sweetheart, they made you believe this during the brainwashing—“

“No,” Bucky insisted, pressing his forehead into the wall.

“I’ll get you out of here and take you home and we’ll go talk to someone, okay? You don’t have to feel like this anymore—“

“You don’t remember.” Bucky’s voice was so unbearably gentle and tender. He let his eyelids droop all the way shut. “I do.”

Natasha felt herself deflate.

He seemed to hug himself tighter in the straitjacket. “Watching you and Steve. When he pinned me down while I was being strangled, and started kissing you.”

Natasha laid her hands on the floor so they would stop shaking. “That happened with Pierce?”

Bucky seemed to have ran out of energy to speak. He simply nodded his head, hair scraping against the padded floor, eyes completely devoid of emotion. He closed them again.

“Wouldn’t I know if it did?” Natasha grabbed his shoulder and shook him, a few notches away from it being considered violent. “James, wake up.”

Bucky’s eyes opened slowly, like he was still in a deep trance. “Maybe I wasn’t the only one made to forget things.”

**

“Are you sure you want me to do this?” The tips of Wanda’s fingers glowed red. “I could hurt you.”

“Can’t get any worse than this,” Natasha said dryly, closing her eyes and massaging her forehead. Her brain was melting anyway.

The couch sank under Wanda’s weight as she settled next to her. When she opened her eyes, she saw that Wanda’s were closed in concentration. Her fingers hovered and writhed in front of her in fluid motion, glowing red tendrils floating at the tips. Slowly, the glow grew brighter and brighter.

“Close your eyes,” Wanda instructed, never opening hers.

Natasha obeyed instantly. She could still see the searing red behind her eyelids, glowing brighter still. It was starting to burn, engulfing everything.

And then it was pitch black. Someone was crying.

Bucky laid in a heap on the floor near her knees, breathing raggedly. He was stark naked and bruised everywhere. His damp hair was disheveled and stuck limply to his tear-smeared face. Beads of sweat scattered all over his body and his forehead, littered with scrapes and bruises of all colors. Natasha noticed he was bleeding profusely through his anus.

“Sorry,” he sputtered weakly, eyes bloodshot and drooping. He coughed, bruised cheeks digging into the floor. Blood spewed from his swollen lips, a thin trail trickling out and pooling underneath his face. “I’m sorry.”

Natasha moved to reach him, hands outstretched, even though she was afraid to touch him – it looked like he was hurting everywhere. That was when she realized something, someone, was holding her back.

She struggled to free herself of the death grip around her hips, but she was shoved forwards and her head smacked onto the floor inches away from Bucky’s stricken face. She was pounded into brutally, feeling herself splitting open. Her mind was foggy and her limbs somewhat numb, like they were disconnected from her nerves and she had no control over them.

Despite the drugs subduing her, she thrashed with all her might and elbowed her rapist clumsily in the nose. He grunted, calling her a “stupid bitch”, in a voice Natasha recognized. She dragged herself towards Bucky, who coughed up another spray of blood, but Pierce yanked her backwards towards him by her hair.

She caught a glimpse of blond hair, just like Steve’s, but with an evil grin which were nothing like Steve’s. Pierce’s nose looked broken but that seemed to excite him even more.

Natasha jerked herself away and landed on her hands, scraping her palms. Her head whipped around to find Bucky but he was gone. There was no trace of him, not even his blood. Expecting to see Pierce looming over her, Natasha whipped her head back around, her hair lashing against her chin, but he was gone too.

Her fingers grasped at the ends of her hair, realizing they were short and curly but her mind was too fuzzy to make the connection.

The next thing she knew, she was back in Wanda and Vision’s living room. She could feel the ghost of the excruciating agony inside her vagina, like it had been etched into her mind so deeply she brought it back with her into the present.

Wanda’s face was warped into pain and sympathy, fingers still lifted in the air like she forgot to put them down. “Nat…”

“What was that?” Natasha asked. She realized she was crying. She jumped up and pulled down the waistband of her pants to see if Pierce’s hands were imprinted on her. They weren’t. “Wanda, _what was that_?”

“I went deep into the recesses of your mind,” Wanda said, looking almost as traumatized as Natasha was. “To see the things you buried. Made to bury,” she corrected herself.

Natasha scrubbed a tear away angrily but another rolled down, followed by another.

Misty-eyed, Wanda said, “I’m so sorry.”

Natasha had had enough of people apologizing to her to last her another lifetime. “No.” She paced the floor, with no direction, her ponytail swinging behind her back. Her hair was long, definitely past her chin. “No. No.” The tears wouldn’t stop coming and the more she tried to wipe them away, the more they smeared into one another. She pressed her fingers into her hairline.

She was going mad; she could feel it.

Wanda gently pulled her wrists away and pulled her into a hug. Natasha wailed loudly into Wanda’s shoulder. “You don’t have to remember this,” Wanda murmured softly. Natasha felt her knees weakening. Wanda was supporting most of her weight. “Just say the word and I’ll take it all away.”


	4. There's too little of me and there's too much of everything else

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha Romanoff is never one to just sit and watch.

“Maria, it’s me.”

Natasha heard distant but rapid footsteps milling about in the background, merging with faraway voices.

“What can I do for you?”

“Can you pull up my records?” Natasha asked, looking out the window but seeing nothing. The city felt awfully big without Bucky, the days stretching endlessly into one another. One would have thought that she would never be able to survive without him but the truth was she had – she’d gotten by years without him at a time, not knowing where he was or if she would ever see him again; but that hadn’t been living, that had just been surviving. “From the 80s?”

“Right on it.”

Natasha twirled her long, straight hair idly around her finger while Maria ran a cross-search on her. She never wore the same hairstyle for long – and she realized she missed having curly hair. It had been all the rage in the 80s. But after that memory Wanda dredged up…

Maria’s screen monitor beeped through her phone.

“You’ve got to be more specific here,” Maria said. “You were pretty busy the entire decade.”

She had been. Bombing children’s hospitals, heading operations in Russia, double-crossing the British intelligence and a few more atrocities she could never forgive herself for.

“Anything related to HYDRA?”

“None.”

“Anything suspicious? Something in an obscure location, or that doesn’t fit the timeline?”

“Give me a moment.”

Natasha waited with baited breath, gripping the phone tightly.

A lot of things must have come up because Maria replied, “I’m going to need more time to analyze all this. Is it urgent or am I doing you a favor?”

“Both.” Natasha splayed her hand against the new glass Stark’s team installed to replace the one she exploded. “Check my medical records.”

“Hang on.”

The phone was hot against Natasha’s ear.

“Narrowed down to June 28th, 1987. Diagnosed with brain damage, impaired memory and injury to your sex organs. You asked for suspicious. I hope it doesn’t get weirder than this.” The line was silent for a moment. “Nat. Is everything okay?”

“What else is in that file?”

“Apparently, you missed rendezvous. Declared compromised. Mission went completely by the wayside. Instantly provided with medical attention when you finally returned to base. Refused to give statements regarding previous whereabouts and was punished accordingly.”

She didn’t ‘ _refuse’_ to give statements. They had made her forget. She had nothing to report back.

“What was the mission?”

“Sabotaging Europe military’s operation against Japanese diplomats.”

Huh.

“Alright. Thanks,” she said.

“Whatever it is you’re up to, Nat, good luck.” Maria hung up.

**

Wanda, Vision, and Clint came back from visiting Bucky in his cell, wearing matching disturbed looks.

“I can’t,” Wanda said for what seemed like the hundredth time. “There’s too much trauma for me to comb through. Everything’s really intricate and intertwined. His psyche is fragile enough as it is.”

“What about that stone in your forehead?”

“If it was that simple, Tony, it would have been done,” Vision replied patiently.

“They’re calling him a threat,” Clint added, the weight in his words adding nothing to the millstone around Natasha’s neck. She already felt like the ground was swallowing her whole. What did a bit more load matter at this point?

Tony turned his entire torso in Clint’s direction. “What, they want to lock him up forever?”

“Or worse.”

“He’s not a criminal,” Wanda said softly.

“To the government, he’s a liability.” Clint glanced at Natasha but couldn’t maintain eye contact. “Ross suggests either he be kept contained, or be given the lethal injection.”

Natasha saw red for a moment. “And Fury has no say in this?”

“What power did Fury have when we had to sign the accords?” Clint retorted. Natasha saw Tony flinch out of the corner of her eye.

“Captain Rogers will not let any of that happen, rest assured,” Vision interjected before the discussion got ugly.

“Neither will I,” Natasha cut in bitingly.

“ _No_ _one_ is going to let any of that happen,” Tony interjected, raising his voice to take control and diffuse the situation.

Wanda scratched her scalp and pushed her hair back off her forehead. “Give me time and maybe I could, I don’t know, manipulate Ross into signing whatever that releases Bucky from all affiliations.”

Clint’s eyebrows knit together. “That’s a very delicate plan.”

“Does anyone have a better one?” Wanda challenged.

“Vision,” Tony said, now swiveling the chair towards him. “Phase Barnes out of his cell.”

Vision looked like Tony was rapidly wearing though his patience. “Again, if I could have, I would have.”

The conversation ended up branching out into half-formed but ultimately aborted plans. Then Clint started comparing the cell Bucky was held in with his and Wanda’s at the Raft. Wanda compared the shock collar they put on her at the Raft to Bucky’s. Tony stopped speaking.

“I have to go,” Clint announced, standing up. “Taking the boys to soccer practice.”

Natasha wondered what it must feel like for him – going from having such a normal life with his family, and then diving straight back into all this chaos. A lesser man would have split right down the middle.

“It’s nice,” Natasha commented once she was left alone with Tony, following him into his workshop, “to see how much you care about him.”

“What, Barnes? I only care because his medical bills are through the roof and ex-assassins don’t have insurance,” Tony said dryly. “And maybe because keeping grudges against a man who had been programmed to make me an orphan for half of my life is beneath me.”

“I know.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m going to be buddies with him or whatever. I hope you and Spangles aren’t expecting that.”

“We’re not.”

Tony ignored her, tightening a relatively small screw with a huge wrench. Natasha had no idea what he was working on but it looked almost finished. “Hand me that screwdriver, will you?”

Natasha stared at the opened, clattered toolbox. “Which one?”

“Just. Hand me the whole thing.” Natasha passed them over and he immediately started tweaking something with something that looked like a plier, and not a screwdriver. “Did Star visit Bucks today?” Natasha rolled a nut absent-mindedly. “Don’t touch that. Also, I made a punny joke and it deserves recognition.”

“I don’t know. He’s avoiding me.” Natasha put the nut back where she found it. “And for good reason.”

“It’s _Rogers_. He doesn’t hold grudges. And I thought Barnes and Noble were a matching set? Inseparable and all that.”

Natasha fiddled with a weird, heavy tool. “I don’t think he can. Bucky might have another panic attack.” She let it drop with a muted clang. “It’s all my fault.”

“Barnes has a safe word, doesn’t he?” Tony flipped the visor of a welding helmet down over his face and began…well, welding. Sparks flew everywhere.

“I don’t think he realized he needed it until it was too late.” Natasha had to raise her voice to be heard over the grinding metal.

“Then it’s not your fault.” Tony shut the power off and took out a drill.

“I shouldn’t have brought Steve into it.”

Tony started drilling, like he refused to listen to her self-deprecating laments. He kept going until Natasha thought her ears were going to bleed. Mercifully, he turned it off and flipped up the visor. “And why did you?”

“I know what Steve means to Bucky.”

“And you thought, what? You were going to share him?”

“I wanted to…” she gestured at whatever Tony was doing, “ _weld_ Bucky and James into the same person.”

“Why Bucky? You already have James.”

“You of all people know nothing functions right without its missing parts.”

“Bullshit.” Tony laid down his tools with a thud and flipped the visor back down over his face.

“What do you want me to _say_ , Tony?” Natasha demanded through gritted teeth. She was angry a lot lately.

“Just be honest.” He held his hands up in self-defense. “Not to me. To yourself.”

“Listen,” Natasha sighed, pulling her hair back from her face to clear what little she could of the clutter in her head, “I’m tired of listening to everyone talk and talk and talk while I’m sat here struggling to fit a mismatched piece of some insane jigsaw puzzle –“

“Nat.”

“ _What_?”

“Say it.”

“Say _what_?”

“Why you did it.”

“I just told you. I can’t keep repeating myself until my tongue rots off –“

“Nat.”

“Because I can’t deal with him anymore!” Her voice echoed back faintly, reverberating throughout the entire workshop, yet the anguish remained undiluted. Natasha wanted to lean back – her neck and shoulders were caving under the weight of the world – but she was sitting on a stool. “It’s too much for me,” she admitted quietly. “I can’t do this alone.”

Tony barely reacted, like he had been expecting this kind of outburst – had seen the pain fermenting and the rage smoldering inside her. He took off his helmet and set it on the table. It made Natasha even more frustrated. Apathy had always been her defining trait – even if it was just a default display – and now it’s like everyone had seen her naked.

“I guess I was hoping Steve could fix him in ways I couldn’t.”

Tony’s face softened. He picked up his tools again so Natasha wouldn’t feel self-conscious about re-stitching the same seams over and over again in front of him. “You ever think about taking it or leaving it?”

“I’m never giving up on him.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

Natasha heaved in a deep silent breath, and let it out in a gust of sigh. “You can take the prisoner out of the war but you can’t take the war out of the prisoner.”

“And so be it,” Tony responded. “Brains aren’t rewired in a day.” He put the helmet back over his face and did something that sparked.

“It’s been three years. And seventy before that.”

“That was a…simile? A proverb? The Rome thing?”

“He’s losing it.”

Tony did a weird thing with his face, even as he concentrated on working with his hands. If facial expressions could stutter, that was exactly what it would look like. Natasha could tell he was looking for a way to agree with her without further upsetting her. “If his delusions are bleeding out like this, then I really think he should stay there and get the help he needs.”

Natasha traced invisible patterns on Tony’s steel tabletop. “It wasn’t a delusion.”

Tony took helmet off completely. “Could you say that again?”

“HYDRA scrubbed it out of my memories, like they did him.” What else was hiding in his head, just waiting for the chance to leap at him and tear out his throat?

Tony laid the helmet very gently like he didn’t realize he was doing it. “How did you figure it out?”

“Wanda dug it out of my brain. Maria pulled it out of my files.” She glanced up at Tony. “The details align. Everything checks out.”

“Barnes isn’t crazy,” Tony said, “but he’s about to be.” He rubbed a hand wearily over his face, smearing the left side with grease and soot. “Natasha. I don’t. I don’t even know what to say.”

“Then don’t.”

“How did he…were you in Siberia?”

Shaking her head, Natasha said “I was undercover in _Japan_ , against the Europeans. I think Pierce had his people kidnap me.”

“You pissed off a few Russians.”

“Double-crossed them, but I didn’t even get to finish the mission. I think these two cases are unrelated.”

“You don’t sound like someone who gets kidnapped easily.”

Natasha shrugged non-committedly.

“Could Barnes have been undercover, too?”

The thought did cross her mind, but it had been thirty-years ago. Bucky had even shot her twice since then. It didn’t matter.

“How are you dealing?”

“I’m fine.”

“Nat.”

“I’m fine.”

Tony sighed. “Well. If you say so.”

“The longer I let him stay there, the longer everyone thinks he’s completely deranged.”

Tony sat down, like they had been playing the conversation like a broken record. With a voice that reflected his exhaustion, he asked, “You’re breaking him out?” Only it didn’t sound like a question.

“If that’s what it takes.”

“And every time, it ages me a decade.” Natasha opened her mouth to speak but Tony talked over her. “I’m old enough as it is. Just please, _please_ , let them help him.”

“What can they do for him now that they haven’t done when we first found him? What could possibly work now that hasn’t worked before?”

“What could _you_ possibly do now that will work this time around?”

“At least he‘ll be home. They got him tied up and locked away like an animal, Tony.”

The frustration was clearly spilling out through Tony’s body language. “And the next time he flips out? A professional assassin who has completed every mission ever given to him has put a target on himself and he is not going to fail twice.”

Natasha didn’t have an answer to that. She had always been the kind of person to reason based on logic. Steve was the one who reacted with emotions. But letting Bucky stay in that awful place, so compliant of his circumstance, believing he _deserved_ it…

“You know what? Go find Steve. Your co-parent. Your co-whatever. You’re right. This is too heavy for one person to carry.”

“And if we came to a decision?”

Tony spread his arms. “When did I ever win when there’s you and Steve teaming up against me, for Barnes?” He tossed a screwdriver recklessly into the toolbox but left everything else in a disarray. “Now get out of my humble little workshop. Or stay. I’m getting out of here.” He walked out, mumbling, “I need a massage and a two-hour long bubble bath. And you,” he called without looking over his shoulder, “need to go to therapy.”


	5. I’m too much of a lost cause to be found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Avengers assemble, for the last time, to take Bucky home.

It had only been a couple of days but Bucky looked distressingly thin, the straitjacket wrapped tight around his diminished frame, and he was already thin to begin with from all the trauma eating away at him.

He laid flat on his back, folded into the straitjacket, legs akimbo. His bloodshot eyes stared vacantly at the harsh ceiling lights that made his pupils shrivel to tiny little dots and his blue irises almost luminescent. The dark circles under his eyes looked painful.

How long had he been like this?

“Cameras are down,” Tony buzzed in her ear. “Working on the rest of the system. Ten minutes, tops.”

The guard shut the door softly behind Natasha, smiling at her sympathetically. Natasha ventured over and loomed over Bucky. “James. Get up,” she whispered urgently.

His eyes barely shifted, lips parted in slow motion, like he forgot how to move them and how to locate his tongue. “Nat?”

Natasha lifted his shoulders off the floor, his head swaying. Had it not been attached to his neck, it would probably roll right off. “Up. Come on, that’s it.” She managed to get him sitting up, propped up on his side against the wall. His lips were chapped, skin burning even through the straitjacket. He was most likely running a fever, his skin taking on that waxy look again. “Can you hear me, James?”

Bucky didn’t respond at all. It was like neither of them were there.

“He’s not responding to me,” she said into her comm.

“What’s wrong with him?” Steve asked.

Bruce’s voice came in. “That’s just the drugs they’re giving him. It’s keeping him subdued and loopy.”

Well. One less thing to worry about.

Natasha knelt down next to him, putting on a pair of gloves before pulling out a wire steel.

“Hurry, guys,” Wanda urged.

“Three more minutes,” Tony requested.

Natasha tilted Bucky’s head back, exposing the shock collar sitting around his throat. He seemed to barely notice. “This is going to hurt,” she warned him. Bucky’s eyes shifted just a little bit, but he made no further signs of comprehension.

Pinching the steel wire between her fingers, she jammed it into his shock collar.

The red light on the collar began blinking at the same time Bucky started seizing, the electricity pulsing through his malnourished body. His breaths stuttered, lips bared as he screamed through clenched teeth.

“Monitors are disabled,” Tony assured her. “He can scream as loudly as he wants. No one’s coming. Yet.”

Natasha held him down with one hand on his quivering chest, the other twisting the delicate steel wire through the small gap in the collar exterior, trying to mess up its internal wiring system to deactivate it. The gloves she wore absorbed most of the shock from reaching her skin.

Bucky’s heart pumped erratically under her palm, his body shaking uncontrollably. Blood started trickling out of his nose.

“Hang on, James.” She felt the steel wire making contact with the live wires inside the collar, but struggled to damage them. The harder she poked and prodded, the more electricity the collar seemed to emit, sending the fire racing through Bucky’s veins to reach new heights. Even Natasha’s protected fingers were tingling.

Bucky was barely screaming now, puffs of air spitting through his clenched teeth in bursts between labored gasps; he barely had air left in his lungs to make a sound, and his clenched muscles kept his diaphragm from expanding in order to take in a breath. His whole body was taut and rigid, shrunken muscles stretched out over fragile bones, his body spasming violently, scrambling to withstand the shock wrecking through his nerves.

Paying attention to the sound of the grindings from inside the shocking device, Natasha pictured in her mind’s eye what the internal mechanisms might look like, navigating the steel wire based on hearing. She gently nudged the steel wire to the side, and finally felt something being dislodged out of place.

The blinking red light went dead, but so did Bucky.

His heart stuttered under Natasha’s restraining hand and went still, although his body continued jerking, the electric charge still coursing through him.

Bunching the straitjacket in her fists, Natasha shoved his upper body back down onto the floor, too hasty to be gentle. Her own heart beat wildly in her ears. She tore off the gloves, produced a laser from the hidden pockets in her coat with one hand, and activated her comm with the other. “Collar deactivated. He’s in cardiac arrest,” she reported. She ignored Steve’s exclamations of concern, cutting through Bucky’s thick straitjacket smoothly. “Defibrillating.” Bucky was wearing an anti-suicide smock underneath, which Natasha tore out of the way.

Remaining calm, she pressed her fists into his motionless bare chest, now that all the electricity had left his body, and gauged the right amount of electroshock it took from the bracelets to jumpstart his heart. She zapped him and his body jerked once, his tattered clothing laying around him in scraps, and laid still again. She pressed her electrified fists into him once more, watching as her bracelets glowed blue, signaling the electrical discharge. The force of it made Bucky’s body jolt so hard his shoulders lifted before crashing back down, hair in his face.

Natasha felt like a mad scientist trying to reanimate a corpse.

She tried once more, but to no avail. _You cannot do this to me._

Holding her breath, Natasha repositioned her fists. “Work with me, James.” She released the charge from the bracelets again, feeling the static tickling her wrists. Bucky’s body jerked again, but this time his mouth fell open in a desperate gulp of air, feeding oxygen into his starved lungs.

Through her clouded vision, Natasha saw his piercing blue eyes blink weakly up at her.

His heart was kicking and fluttering under her hands.

“Resuscitated,” she breathed, stroking his face with shaking fingers.

“No time to celebrate,” Tony said. “System’s been offline for two minutes now. Didn’t want to bother you.”

Natasha placed the length of her arm under the back of Bucky’s neck, his chin tilted upwards, slid down so it was behind his shoulders. She lifted his upper body until she managed to get him in a sitting position. He swayed over to the side and rested against the padded walls. His eyes closed.

“Come on. We have to go. Come on,” she encouraged him, trying to pull him to his feet. The force of it tilted his chin upwards again, exposing the damned shock collar. Natasha noted that the light was still off. There was no telling if it could come back online at any moment. “ _James_.”

Eyes open but still transfixed to the ceiling, he shimmied uselessly like he still had the straitjacket on. Natasha pulled him up with all she had, grateful that he didn’t have his metal arm on. Finally upright, he swayed unsteadily on his feet, locking his knees in a feeble attempt to keep himself from keeling over.

Natasha sandwiched Bucky between herself and the wall, for temporary support while they oriented themselves. His lips were slightly parted, eyes once again heavy-lidded and unblinking. Her arms around his waist were the only thing keeping him on his feet, his remaining arm loose around her shoulders.

She pushed them off the wall, using the momentum to drive Bucky’s wobbling frame forwards.

“Don’t,” Bucky whispered, head lolling and feet dragging. “Not the chair. Everything. Hurts.”

Natasha’s heart sank. He thought he had been in the electric chair, brain burned out of his mind.

Aiming a fist at the door, she launched a small missile that blew down Bucky’s metal cell door. It fell with a dull thump outside the room. Alarms started blaring deafeningly as Natasha hauled a barely responsive Bucky through the hallway. Security came charging from every corner. With her other hand, she slid a tranquilizer gun out of her jacket and fired at them as she went. They dropped to the floor like dead flies.

Wanda appeared in her line of sight, landing gracefully on her feet, eyes and fingertips glowing red. More guards keeled over – and simultaneously, shrouded in the wispy red glow of Wanda’s magic.

Natasha quickened her pace while Wanda held them back, who was smiling almost maniacally as she did so. Bucky could barely keep up – he stumbled over his own feet and would have fallen on his face if Natasha hadn’t caught him.

“Almost there,” Natasha panted, the exertion of pulling his weight starting to wear her down. “I promise you, we’re getting out of here.”

“I can’t hold them for long,” Wanda warned. Some of the sleeping guards were starting to twitch, while some were already sitting up. With a wriggle of her fingers, they slumped back down.

Natasha reinforced her grip around Bucky and dragged him down the stairs, his feet bouncing off of each step, until they reached the landing. He staggered along, eyes dazed and limbs discoordinated, before suddenly doubling over.

He retched and spewed a fountain of vomit, trembling from head to toe. Any other time, Natasha would be there holding his hair back for him but right now she had one hand tight around the tranquilizer gun – always at the ready – and the other already nudging him forward.

Gasping, his knees started to buckle again but Natasha held on as tight as she could.

“No, no, no, stay with me.” His head sagged over his own chest, his feet stumbling more than actually taking steps, his body leaning against her side. They were moving too slowly to make it count. Bucky was starting to lose consciousness again and they slumped down onto the floor together.

“Natasha, the front door is wide open yet I still don’t see you and Barnes running through it,” Tony said. “Tick-tock.”

“I’m _trying_ ,” Natasha grunted into the comm. She grabbed Bucky’s cleft chin and shook his head roughly from side to side to revive him. He came to, coughing and opening his eyes blearily. That was all Natasha needed. She pushed all the muscles in her body to coax him into standing up before he could pass out on her again.

Bucky was awake just enough to stand with her help but as soon as he got to his feet, he threw up again.

Wanda levitated down the stairs, descending in front of them. “Let’s go. Go, go, go,” she hissed, already pulling at Bucky before he could even get his breath back. Natasha tugged him along, clearing another flight of stairs.

“We’re almost there,” Natasha repeated to Bucky, who looked like he was struggling to keep his eyes open, let alone keep up with their lengthened strides.

They reached the lobby when more guards started shooting at them. Wanda abruptly let go of Bucky to step in front of both him and Natasha, diverting the bullets away with little more than a flick of her wrist. Natasha eyed the exit – double-doors made of glass – just a few feet away. She would crawl, hauling him like a dead body, if she had to.

As she and Bucky got closer, Wanda busy putting more guards to sleep, she could see Sam’s shadow on the ground as he tackled the security guarding outside from the air. More guards flooded their way.

Steve’s shield came slicing through the air, rounding out seven of the guards in one motion.

“They were just doing job, Cap, what the fuck?” Tony yelled through the comm, watching from the cameras. Even Wanda, who was enjoying this, looked horrified.

Steve caught the shield when it circled back to him. “They’ll live.”

“Ross has been alerted,” Clint reported. “It’s on sight now. Not just him. Anyone of you.”

Feet never faltering, Natasha switched guns one handedly and shot at the glass door repeatedly until it shattered. As soon as she and Bucky got out with Steve hot on their heels, a hail of bullets rained down on them. Wanda effectively deflected it all away.

Vision materialized out of nowhere and swooped down like an eagle, grabbing Bucky out of her hands and flew him into the Quinjet up in the air. More guards shot at the aircraft, even more aggressively now that their patient had escaped, and Vision teased them with an energy blast to scare them off.

Sam shot most of them down with a similar tranquilizer gun while Steve knocked them down with hand–to-hand combat. Natasha hoped he didn’t cripple them for life, furious as she was.

Vision reappeared, gently but hurriedly carrying her, and they soared up into the Quinjet.

Sam came up next, dropping Steve next to Natasha and Bucky, rubbing his arms. “Did you have a big breakfast again?” he panted.

As soon as Wanda flew herself in, Natasha shut the hatch.

Steve crushed the shock collar on Bucky’s neck easily in his hands, the pieces of metal and plastic crumbling like eggshells. There were two red dots over each of Bucky’s carotid arteries where the metal prods had burned into him. He didn’t look like he was aware of surroundings, curling up on the floor with dead eyes.

The bullets pinged noisily off of the Quinjet. Either enraged or merely annoyed, Wanda aimed a beam of red glow down below, breaking through the window. Clint pulled them up onto a higher altitude until the bullets could no longer be heard.

“All aboard?” Tony asked through the comm. At the same time, there was a rapping sound against the other side of window. Natasha glanced up and saw him flying side by side with them. “Wanda, you owe me maintenance bills.”

“There’s room for one more,” Clint invited from the cockpit.

“Nah, I’ll pass.” He flew away and faded between the clouds. Through the comm, he said, “Gotta make a little detour.”


	6. I’m too much yours to be anyone else’s

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I hate this.

The sound of the suitcase zipping shut made it feel so _final_.

Natasha had said goodbye to Bucky so many times over the decades. In fact, there more times when she _didn’t_ get to say goodbye; she had always felt so elated every time there were rumors of another assassination by someone who didn’t exist – it had been the only thing that gave her hope that he was alive.

But today, bathed in the optimistic sunlight glow on their balcony and watching him finish packing after just having had him back for a week – two if you counted the first few days back from the hospital where he had alternated between crying so hard he got sick and being catatonic – Natasha felt mournful and somehow, nostalgic. Hopeful, but devastated.

Tucking an errand strand of hair over his ear and pushing the suitcase aside, he said, “I think that’s everything.” He looked around the room as if double-checking anything he might have left behind, before settling his gaze on her. “Come with me.”

It was hard for Natasha to stand her ground with him looking at her like that.

“We can’t all go.”

Casting his gaze downwards, he nodded in resignation. He got to his feet, patting his coat pockets to make sure he hadn’t forgotten his phone and wallet. His bags and suitcase surrounded him like a summoning circle.

He was stalling.

Natasha got up from the garden chair she had been sitting on and walked over to him. “Do you even need this ugly thing?” she teased, smoothing down the lapels of his coat. “It’s going to be hot as balls there.”

The corner of Bucky’s lip curled wryly. “You’re hotter.” He booped her nose. “Way hotter.”

Natasha laughed, buttoning it up for him. He laid his flesh hand over hers, stilling her fingers.

“I can’t give you everything,” Natasha said.

“You are everything.”

“We both know it’s not enough.” She resumed buttoning his coat and dusted off imaginary crumbs of his shoulders.

Bucky ran his metal hand through her hair, blazing red in the bright sunlight, and enveloped her in his arms. “I’m coming back for you.”

“It’s not safe.”

They were all fugitives now. The only reason Bucky had been allowed to leave and take refuge elsewhere was because Tony had bribed Ross with that…thing Natasha had seen him building. It was a relatively small but deadly nuclear weapon – but what Tony conveniently forgot to mention was that it could only be activated when Tony wanted it to. Which was hopefully, never.

“Safe is boring,” he mumbled, hooking his chin over her shoulder.

Natasha pulled back to look at him, and brought her lips to his. They kissed, soft and slow, like they had all the time in the world. They didn’t.

“I love you so much,” she whispered, their foreheads touching.

Bucky closed his eyes. “Wish I didn’t have to do this without you.”

“I’ll visit you,” Natasha promised. “Through holograms and stuff.” She brushed his hair back, cherishing how it felt gliding through her fingers. It had gotten long; Natasha liked it on him. “From wherever I’ll be. It’s not the same but.” She didn’t bother finishing her sentence.

Seeing someone and not being able to touch them was only going to make it even harder but it was all they had.

“I’ll send you letters, too,” Bucky grinned, caressing her collarbone with his metal thumb. “I’m pretty romantic like that.”

Natasha burst out laughing. “You’re sending letters from the most technologically advanced country in the world?”

“They’ll probably get us a private postman. Ramonda spoils me,” he chuckled.

“Everyone loves you, James.”

The trouble look leaked back into his eyes. “Wish I deserved it.”

Natasha buried her face in his chest, wishing he could just – _absorb_ her somehow, straight into his bloodstream, so he would know exactly how much he meant to her and how much she _knew_ he was worth all this.

“I might not be okay for a really long time.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, voice muffled by his ridiculous coat. “Just come back to me. When you can.” When the world decided to make room for them without repercussions.

“Always.”

**

“Ready, Buck?” Steve asked.

“Granted asylum instead of getting locked up in one? Can’t say no to that.”

Steve laughed. At least he still had his humor attached.

Bucky wrapped his metal fingers around his suitcase, twisting his head back to look at Natasha. He smiled, the kind that looked so real it only made it more painful, wriggling his fingers in a tiny wave. Then he walked towards the Quinjet, hauling his luggage like they were heavier than they looked.

Steve walked up to Natasha, feet shuffling like they were chained together.

“This doesn’t feel right,” he said. “You should be the one with him.”

“I’ve got the UN to deal with,” Natasha replied. “Snobbish congressmen and other fun stuff. Then I’m off the grid.”

“We’ll be back. In a month or two,” Steve assured her. “We’ll come find you guys.”

Natasha beamed up at him and stood on her toes to hug him. Steve stooped, hugging her back. She closed her eyes, basking in the warmth of their friendship. They were more than that. They were family.

“Take care of him for me.”

“I will.”

They weren’t sure if Shuri could break the triggers that made Bucky associate Steve with Pierce – they would have to leave most of it to the psychiatrists – but the plan was for her to delve further into his mind and try to lighten other uncovered traumas so when they did resurface, they wouldn’t send him reeling. 

Natasha planted a gentle kiss on Steve’s cheek.

“I’m going to miss you. And Sam. Every day,” he told her.

“Me too.”

Natasha stood back and watched as Steve made his way to the Quinjet. He gave her a last lingering glance before pulling the hatch closed. Bucky stayed inside and she was glad he did – it would be too hard to send him off again.

The aircraft lit up, made a revving noise, and took off into the air as Natasha watched, feeling a little piece of her soul disappearing with them. The rest of the Avengers had all scattered into various parts of the world, and it left her feeling empty.

One moment she had a family, and the next, they were everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

The Quinjet grew smaller and smaller, and finally disappeared between the clouds.

Natasha walked back to the Tower.

She had been questioning destiny again – if the whole time it had been trying to keep Bucky and her apart, or together. The answer still eluded her, if there was a fixed answer. Then again, fate having returned Bucky back to her, again and again, despite also ripping him away from her, had to mean something.

Natasha wasn’t religious – the Red Room never touched on things like that – but she had to believe in _something_. Even under the most strenuous and dire circumstances, she knew, at least, that the bond between Bucky and her could never be broken. He could forget her name, even, and Natasha would hold onto every single memory they shared for the both of them.

She would find him again. Even if destiny refused to allow it.


End file.
